


An Alien-American Tragedy

by dynastat



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Only a temporary tragedy, an odd kind of slowburn, and a bit of character study
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-03-12 11:32:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13546458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynastat/pseuds/dynastat
Summary: It's the coldest night of the year when the luminescent green bullet scythes through frigid air and connects squarely with its target. Kara Zor-el hears the harsh squeal of skidding tyres and the sickening crunch of a fleshy body colliding with speeding metal as she watches her life explode in a hail of shattered glass. Three years pass before National City sees Supergirl again.





	1. Misfortune

**Author's Note:**

> Blame the story bug.
> 
> Angst lies ahead but, so you know, I am a happy ending addict.

  _It's the coldest night of the year when the luminescent green bullet scythes through frigid air and connects squarely with its target. Kara Zor-el hears the harsh squeal of skidding tyres and the sickening crunch of a fleshy body colliding with speeding metal as she watches her life explode in a hail of shattered glass._

_Three years pass before National City sees Supergirl again._

* * *

 When Lena Luthor races down to her car on the evening of December 19th, 2016 she doesn't intend to die. All she wants is to help. Someway, somehow.

She does help.

But she also dies.

* * *

The CEO is tinkering with the code for L-Corp's new long-range isotope detector when the screen flashes red with an alert and Lena's heart seizes in her chest. It may be a prototype but of course she's already programmed in a kryptonite warning. What kind of genius and, more importantly, what kind of friend would she be if she didn't?

If she follows logic she'd ring the DEO and then stay safely where she is but, when it comes to Kara, logic has a tendency to leap out the window. So, rather than take reasonable action, Lena instead throws herself into her elevator as she hits dial on Alex's number.

The call is over by the time Lena slides behind the wheel of her Lotus Exige and guns the engine. The fact that the DEO's top team is a minute away from wheels up isn't enough to quell her burning anxiety. She's acutely aware of the fact that Kara is in the same sector as the kryptonite and she can't just sit around twiddling her thumbs, hoping that someone else will save the day. If there's anything she might be able to do, she has to be there.

And Lena knows exactly where there is because, after all, she is a Luthor. Of course she's hacked into the DEO's Supergirl-tracking system and of course she's patched the feed into her GPS in case she ever needs it. Unlike the rest of her family, however, her motivations are not nefarious. She just likes being able to check that Kara is still alive and kicking when the hero gets herself into deathly dangerous situations. She finds it comforting.

On her way to 17th street on the south side of downtown, Lena runs no less than 6 red lights. Mercifully, the streets are eerily empty. Nearly the entirety of National City is cloistered inside, hiding from the 40 degree weather that Lena, as a former Metropolis resident, finds perfectly balmy.

When Lena aggressively swings her car onto 17th (completely uncaring as she crosses the centreline) she's still a mile from Kara's latest ping. Once she straightens up, the supercharged V6 behind her growls viciously as she hammers the accelerator to the floor and hits twice the speed limit in 3.5 seconds.

Three quarters of a minute later, Lena crests a rise and catches a shadow of a figure in her headlights. The deadly glow emanating from the weapon ensconced in its hands is terrifyingly visible, even from a distance. When Lena then sights Kara to her right, staring down the barrel of the poisonous assault rifle, it takes the Luthor mere milliseconds to make a decision. With reckless disregard for her own well-being, she aligns her vehicle with the position of the man in the middle of the road. Once she's sure of her trajectory, her fury-and-fear powered foot stomps on the gas pedal with all the strength she can muster.

* * *

It is six seconds from impact when the Cadmus lieutenant realises he is on a collision course. In his surprise, he has just enough time to turn, aim and fire.

* * *

The sound of the shot rends the still air as the kryptonite laced bullet whistles through the atmosphere. Lena doesn't have a chance to register the noise before her windshield fragments in her face and the lethal projectile lodges itself in her throat. Her murderer has shot her six inches lower than planned, but it will still do the job. It just won't be instantaneous.

When the bullet pierces Lena's skin, her hands involuntarily yank on the wheel as blood pours down her neck. The Lotus twists into a tailspin and as her lungs begin to fill with her very life force, Lena has a long enough moment of clarity to appreciate the misfortune of today being the day she drove her one car that lacks bulletproof glass.

Her melancholy quickly lifts when her body jerks violently to the side as the rear of her vehicle slams into her soon-to-be killer. Lena swears she can feel his bones fracture from the force. As her wheels thud roughly over his form, it's a small comfort that at least he dies before she does.

Three seconds later, the Lotus crashes front on into a lamp post at more than fifty miles an hour and the airbag erupts, smashing Lena in the chest. The bag has barely begun to deflate before the driver-side door is wrenched off its hinges and a desperate Supergirl slices the seat belt loose with precision laser bursts.

Lena is only dimly aware of her surroundings as Kara drags her out of the car and into the middle of the street. Unbeknownst to the two women, the large caliber round has grazed Lena's anterior jugular vein, perforated her oesophagus and trachea before striking a vertebra. It has then splintered, ricocheting a bullet fragment forward to rupture her carotid artery. In less than a minute, Lena has lost nearly a third of her blood volume.

"Stay with me, Lena," Kara begs as she frantically wipes damp hair off the Luthor's cold, clammy forehead, clinging to the sound of Lena's thready but present pulse. She might not know the specifics, but it's obvious to anyone that this is bad. "Please!"

The hero clutches her best friend tenderly as she tenses for take-off but, before she can become airborne, Lena's pale fingers are scrabbling at her chest and there's a wet husk as the CEO tries to talk.

Kara flicks her gaze down and sees the agonising sight of a blood soaked Lena twitching her head no. She wants to ignore it. She wants to fly the woman to the nearest hospital anyway because Rao-dammit maybe a doctor can still do something. She wants to try.

But, in the end, she listens.

They both know they won't make it in time. Not with Kara's speed degraded by the kryptonite shards embedded in Lena's neck. And anyway, Lena hates flying. Kara knows that Lena hates flying. It's not hard to guess that Lena doesn't want to die in the air.

Resigned to fate, the Kryptonian cradles Lena delicately in her arms as she lowers the two of them to the ground. The CEO's eyes flicker as she coughs harshly, spraying her blood across the House of El crest and Kara barely chokes back a sob.

"Lena..."

The name is whispered with grief-filled reverence as Kara traces the side of Lena's face with her thumb. The Luthor's eyelids flutter as though she's trying with all her might to pull them open, but she's fighting a losing battle.

* * *

Lena wishes she could say that dying in Kara's arms is a peaceful experience, but it isn't. It's miserable, and searingly painful. The sensation of her air intake being restricted by the fluid in her lungs plus the oxygen starvation from massive haemorrhaging is horrific. Then there's the burning throb in her neck and the airbag-induced ache in her rib cage, separate and aside from her emotional pain.

She's not ready to die. There's so much more she wants to do with her life but she knows she's not going have a chance anymore. That knowledge hurts as much as the gunshot wound.

* * *

"Lena," Kara repeats shakily, no longer able to stop tears from tracking down her dirty cheeks. There so many things she wants to say that she can't find where to start. The rest of the world disappears around her as her fingers linger over the CEO's features until she manages to pick out the common thread from her thoughts.

"I n-need you," the Kryptonian croaks between ragged breaths, "to know that I-I... I love you."

But Lena doesn't hear her. She's already unconscious.

A beat passes as Kara gently strokes the CEO's temple and then Lena's head lolls to the side. And Kara knows she's gone.

The hero hardly notices the sound that rips from deep within her chest or the light that blazes from her eyes as she stares furiously at the sky, hands curled impotently in the ruined fabric of Lena's shirt. Both Kara Zor-el and Kara Danvers are well accustomed to loss, but this... This might just be one loss too many.


	2. Blisters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who took the time drop a kudos or a comment. It's great writing motivation and never fails to make me smile :)))))
> 
> And now, I serve you angst - with a side of Sanvers. Just a warning though, if you struggle with vomit, well... reader beware.

Alex is a block away when her DEO van begins to shake from the shockwave of Supergirl's anguished roar and twin laser beams lance vertically upwards. Agent Danvers shouts at her driver to step on it but with Kara bellowing the way that she is, even light-speed wouldn't feel fast enough.

When the DEO team reaches the incident site, they are greeted with an appalling scene. A man's mangled body is splayed across the pavement while a wrecked vehicle is crunched into a pole and Supergirl is crouched in the middle of the road with Lena Luthor's bloody, lifeless body in her lap. Alex leaps from the passenger seat before the van even reaches a full stop and sprints across the asphalt as quickly as her human legs will carry her. By the time the elder Danvers makes it to her sister's side, Kara's face is glowing radioactive red as she vents her immeasurable distress.

(It's not discovered until later that Supergirl has inadvertently destroyed a $200 million next-gen GPS satellite. Boy, does Director Henshaw get in trouble for that one...)

Because she's a well-trained agent, Alex goes through the motions of assessing Lena's vitals even though it's clear she isn't going to find any. Kara makes no moves to acknowledge her sister's presence as Alex lowers her ear to Lena's breathless mouth and hunts around for the CEO's non-existent pulse. Once death is confirmed, Alex looks softly at her tormented sister. She calls her name once, twice, three times but she doesn't receive a response, even though the light rays emanating from Kara's eyes are beginning to flicker as she reaches the very dregs of her solar energy reserves. Mere moments later, the lasers abruptly cut out and Kara slumps forward, exhausted. Solar flaring really takes it out of her. Then there's the emotional agony and the Kryptonite proximity poisoning...

As Alex wipes her bloodied fingers on her pants and shakes the Kryptonian's shoulder, Kara just closes her eyes and curls her fists tightly into Lena's shirt. Alex repeats Kara's name for a fourth time, aiming for a tone that is both sympathetic and steady (despite the fact she feels anything other than steady) but the Kryptonian willfully ignores her even as Alex continues to shake her shoulder. 

While the younger Danvers closes herself off, the elder Danvers has to bite back the bile rising in her throat and blink away the burning in her eyes to wrest control of her emotions. She can break down later, but not now. Now she has to be functional. She has to do her job and speaking of that, doing her job currently involves separating Kara from Lena Luthor's corpse.

As the Danvers sisters have been hunkered down in the street, the DEO recovery crew has assembled in the distance. They're clearly reluctant to approach the temperamental superhero but they can't hold off forever.

"Kara, I'm sorry but you gotta come with me," Alex tries, tugging on Kara's upper arm as the wailing sirens of NCPD squad cars reach earshot.

Again, there is no reply. 

Alex doesn't want to physically pry her off but, as the recovery team slowly approaches, Kara isn't leaving her much choice. The sirens are ear-splittingly loud as Alex digs her nails into Kara's hands and peels her fingers away from Lena one-by-one. Solar flared and weakened by kryptonite, Kara doesn't stand a chance.

The Kryptonian decides not to fight the inevitable as Alex grasps her forearms and pulls her away to the side while DEO agents arrive with a body bag and a stretcher. While Kara stares frozen and fixedly at the bagging process, Alex catches a glimpse of Detective Sawyer arriving at the cordon with her lips sucked between her teeth. Maggie swiftly becomes a model of professionalism as she issues orders to her grunts, but Alex knows her ex and she can read the detective's devastation in her stiff posture.

Despite their shared interests, Lena and Maggie were never particularly close during the detective's time with Alex. The whole arrest drama somewhat got in the way. But, after the split, Lena really stood up and reached out. The Luthor was determined that Maggie wasn't to lose all her closest friends along with her relationship. The pair have been catching a yoga class at least once nearly every week for several months and Lena's death is going to hit Maggie like a sledgehammer.

Because some things never change, Detective Sawyer starts arguing vociferously with Agent Hollander over who has jurisdiction over the other dead body while, over by the Danvers sisters, Lena is hauled away. Kara wrenches her arms from Alex's grip and moves to follow the bag and tag crew as they head for the DEO convoy, only to find J'onn standing in the way. She attempts to push past him, but she's compromised and he's bulky. Her efforts are futile and she resentfully knows it.

J'onn starts talking, but she doesn't listen as she turns her back and angrily runs her hands through her hair, wincing when it actually hurts. She's not stupid, he doesn't need to explain why the DEO won't let her near Lena when her neck is still riddled with kryptonite but, for a psychic, he's apparently terrible at getting a message. Alex watches on awkwardly until J'onn finally lapses into silence and crosses his arms sadly over his chest.

Kara's gaze flicks around sporadically and the very air around her begins to feel suffocating as the sights and sounds of the city start to overwhelm her senses even though they aren't amplified. She's intimately familiar with the protocol J'onn has just outlined: the medical assessment, the debrief, the hours under the sun lamp... She's done it all before countless times. It's never fun, and boring without fail but this time... It feels impossible. The mundanity of it all is almost disrespectful. This wasn't any old mission gone wrong.

When J'onn tries to lay a consolatory hand on her shoulder, it's the last straw. She rips herself away from his touch and storms towards the cordon, again ignoring Alex as the agent shouts after her. She pauses beside Maggie, who's fuming after falling victim to the federal agency superiority card, and they share a wordless moment of understanding before Kara ducks under the police tape and strides off into the night. 

She makes it 100ft before the cold sinks into her bones and her powerless frame starts to vibrate with deep shivers. All her body wants to do is curl up someplace warm but, through sheer stubbornness, she forces her shaky legs to keep walking. Being comfortable isn't an option Kara's willing to entertain. Comfort is the last thing she deserves. Lena died because of her. Lena. The best damn woman in this damn city. She's dead and it's all Kara's fault. She didn't fire the gun, but she may as well have for all the good she did.

* * *

Over the course of her punishing, penitent march along late night city streets, Kara eventually becomes so disconnected from her physical self that she stops feeling her borderline hypothermia. Despite the double-takes and askance looks from the odd passerby, she even forgets that she's still clad in her bloodstained supersuit. That is until she spots her reflection in the giant glass door of a Wells Fargo branch.

Her own image is such a revolting reminder of who she is and what she has (and hasn't) done that her gut clenches with guilt and Kara gags so violently that she can't breathe. She has only seconds to spin around and aim for the decorative garden bed behind her before her stomach savagely expels its contents. Vomit splatters over her boots and coats the ends of her hair as she wretches out every last ounce of fluid in her belly. The waves of nausea don't stop when there's nothing left to hurl and Kara drops heavily to her knees as she's wracked by dry heaves.

When her stomach finally settles, everything hurts and Kara's so tired that she's tempted to lie down and pass out in the pool of her own puke. The supersuit is the only thing that stops her. The sensation of it clinging to her skin is so utterly repulsive that it drives her to her feet. If she has to wear the damn thing much longer she's going to scream. She takes a moment to steady herself, leaning on the edge of the garden bed until she can trust her gait and then she staggers off down the street in desperate search of anywhere that will still sell her clothes at 11pm. Otherwise, she'll have to walk home in her underwear and that is not an appealing proposition.

* * *

She's in luck. A block later, she stumbles across an H&M having a pre-Christmas late night and, if the woman she adores with her entire being hadn't just died in her arms, she would thank Rao. 

Neither Kara nor Carla the shop attendant greet each other when Supergirl enters the store, reeking of stomach acid and aging blood. Carla can't be older than 20 and she's both completely starstruck and thoroughly freaked out. She slips her phone out to take a sneaky picture because who the fuck would believe her story otherwise, but Kara notices the movement in her peripheral vision as she hunts through the sweater rack. The hero twists around sharply and fixes the attendant with such a withering glare that Carla involuntarily releases a frightened squeak and drops her phone like it's white hot.

She doesn't dare bend down to retrieve it until long after Supergirl has left the store with a grey hoodie, blue sweat pants and a pair of sneakers safely contained in a plastic bag. Carla is still pretty new to her job and this is definitely the first time an alien has paid her with cash fished out of a knee-high boot.

* * *

Kara makes it another block before she absolutely cannot tolerate the supersuit for even one more minute. She ducks into the first alley she finds and tucks herself beside a stinking dumpster before beginning the long process of peeling her suit off without super-strength to aid her.

She gets lucky again in that, between the cold and the rancid trash, nobody else is drawn to venture down this particular passageway. That means she doesn't have an audience when, five minutes later, she's still only half undressed. Mercifully, half undressed is finally naked enough to pull the thick sweater over her head, which provides both warmth and modesty protection.

When she gets around to yanking off her boots, the left one flicks a speck of vomit skywards and Kara cringes when it lands on her nose. Her night just keeps getting better. She shakes her head morosely as she wipes her face clean with the sleeve of her hoodie before she whips her pants on and laces up her shoes as quickly as her fumbling fingers can manage. Once she's fully dressed in civvies, she digs her phone out of her right boot and ignores the way the screen is lighting up with Alex's name. She also ignores the 17 missed call notifications and the 5 texts as she stuffs the device in her back pocket.

Now that she's free from her superhero persona, she's also free to traipse out of the rank alley. She tames her feral hair into a messy ponytail as she walks and the supersuit is abandoned where it lies, like the trash she thinks it is.

The biting wind is picking up as Kara tugs her hood up over her head and begins the long trudge home. She's many miles from the rent controlled side of town and when she eventually makes it home at 3am, she's paying the price for going sockless when her skin is only as durable as a regular human's. She has the first four blisters of her life and they're horrible. As she eases her sneakers off her trembling feet, she can't help but think she deserves them.

It's quarter past three when Kara collapses onto her bed and she's so entirely exhausted that she doesn't even get into pyjamas, let alone wash her grubby body. She'll regret it in the morning, but that's daytime Kara's problem. Nighttime Kara falls asleep within an instant of her back hitting her duvet and her mind is too shattered to even haunt her with nightmares.

* * *

When Kara's tracker dot finally arrives at her loft, Alex's relieved groan is long and loud. She's been hunched at her DEO desk for hours upon hours, watching her sister wander aimless around the city. Only years of sisterly experience stop her from rushing out to intercept the Kryptonian and drag her home. She's learned first-hand just how much Kara appreciates being confronted when she wants space.

(Hint - it's about as much as a mother appreciates head lice.)

Since ten, all Alex has wanted to do is shut her eyes. Between one and two she dozed off and drooled on her keyboard. But, now that she can actually go to her apartment and properly rest, she's suddenly wired. She's buzzing with energy and without really noticing exactly what she's doing, she fossicks out Maggie's personnel file and chucks the detective's new address into her maps app.

It's not a decision that Alex would ever make if she was sane, but she's not sane. She's lonely, grief-stricken and tired, even if her sympathetic nervous system isn't letting her feel it right that very second.

She packs her gear and clambers onto her bike in the blink of an eye, and it's only as she slips through the front door of Maggie's new building that she considers the dire mistake she's making. Her flash of reason is brief, however, and she quickly finds herself outside Maggie's apartment. Without hesitation, she raps sharply on red-painted wood and the door swings open within seconds to reveal an NCPD detective who obviously hasn't been sleeping either.

Maggie's eyes are rimmed red and puffy from crying, and her sorrow is written deeply in the lines of her face. She's a heartbreaking sight and Alex's certainly cracks an inch further, which is morbidly fascinating because she didn't realise she had any more heart left to break.

If the detective is surprised by the 3am house call from her ex, she doesn't show it as she leans casually against the door-frame while Alex hovers half a foot from the threshold.

Unexpectedly, Detective Sawyer makes the first move. Alex is scuffing the toe of her boot against the hall carpet and anxiously twisting her hands together behind her back when Maggie suddenly grabs her by the lapels and tugs her into a crushing kiss. The momentum sends the pair tumbling into the apartment and Agent Danvers kicks the door closed after them without ever breaking contact with Maggie's lips. It's miraculous that they only suffer three human-furniture collisions as they manoeuvre towards the bedroom with hands roaming over every inch of exposed skin they can reach.

They don't talk.

Instead, clothes are strewn across the place as they're haphazardly discarded. Once Maggie's oversized police academy shirt is draped over the back of the couch, she has hardly anything left to remove but Alex leaves a significantly longer trail. Her jacket hits the floor near the open plan kitchen and her top ends up wrapped around a lounge lamp. Trying to find her bra will be a total headache in the morning because it gets flung down the crevice between Maggie's squishy reading chair and the wall. The agent finally has to detach herself from her former girlfriend when they crash into the edge of the bed because she needs two hands to reach down and pull off her shoes. From there on out, everything between when they land naked atop the covers and when they drift off to sleep, tucked together like slightly mismatched puzzle pieces, becomes a bit of an intimate blur.

The sex is... well... it's weary misery sex. What more can be said? It's not great, but it's enough. It's love, and it's human connection which is exactly what they both need right now. When they wake up all it'll do is complicate an already messy situation but, for tonight, it provides some solace in a world that isn't going to offer them much else.


	3. The early mourning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you know what I never envisaged before I started writing fics? How much time I would spend choosing where to put line breaks. My goodness. Oh, and adverb placement. Don't get me started on that.
> 
> Anyway, here's chapter 3. I would edit it more but... I can't be bothered so all mistakes are mine and I apologise for them in advance.

The sky over National City is loomingly overcast as day breaks on the 20th of December. The sun struggles to assert its dominance through tumultuously roiling clouds and the threat of rain hangs heavy in the humid air. It is into this fittingly bleak greyness that Kara tentatively blinks awake. 

Her return to consciousness is gradual as both her mind and body groggily ascend out of the sludge of sleep and, when her eyes first flutter open, she's so disorientated that 15 seconds pass before she remembers that Lena died. Those 15 seconds are the most blissful moments she experiences for the next 1,113 days. 

It's her hair that brutally yanks her back to reality. 

The smell of her unwashed locks slowly winds its way up her nostrils until it penetrates her brain and ignites her memories like an unwelcome spark in a painful tinderbox. Synapses fire in rapid succession to send a disorganised slideshow of heart-rending images flashing through her mind. Kara's breath catches deep within her chest and her throat clams shut as despair viciously shreds at her very soul. 

If you asked, she wouldn't be able to tell you when the crying started. She's so overwhelmed by the terror of drowning in her own emotions that she doesn't notice when tears begin to stream down her cheeks and drip off her jaw to leave damp reminders of her agony on the pillow.

As her fingers twist furiously in her sheets to fight off the phantom sensation of Lena's wet blood on her hands, the reporter starts to convulse with uncontrollable sobs. She's trapped in some kind of hellish purgatory where half her mind is falsely convinced that she's still _there_ and she can still _do_  somethingeven while the other half is searingly aware of the finality of Lena's passing.

The glaring cognitive conflict wreaks havoc on Kara's already ruined wellbeing and so she cries until her ribs ache too fiercely  to continue.

* * *

It's nearly 10am when Kara's sobs turn dry and trail off into shaky hiccups. It's only then that she finally drags her uncooperative body out of bed and lugs it over to the bathroom because she can't avoid a wash any longer. Her head thuds against cold tiles when she plonks herself down in the bottom of her shower. She draws her knees up to her chest and drops her chin before she reaches up to flick the tap and send scalding water cascading over her bare back.

She's sore in more ways than she can be bothered to count as she huddles underneath the flow of borderline boiling fluid that's leaving her skin red in its wake until that flow starts to run cold. It's only once the water is icy and Kara is breaking out in goosebumps that she fumbles around for the shampoo and actually washes her hair. She scratches her nails so aggressively against her scalp that it stings because the pain on her skull helps distract her from the intolerable hurt she harbours in her heart. She repeats the process all over her body, practically covering herself in claw marks as she goes, until she's so spotlessly clean that she's almost a sterile surface. 

When she's done, she flops out of the shower and grabs the first towel she can get her hands on. It promptly gets employed in another round of maladaptive coping as Kara subjects her already smarting body to another session of abuse under the guise of 'drying herself' while she plods towards her bedroom. When she reaches her wardrobe she ferrets out her fuzzy green mushroom pyjamas and wraps herself in the comforting chenille, wincing as the fabric brushes against her raw skin. 

Once she's dressed, the Kryptonian trails over to the couch and hides from the world under her velvety blue fleece blanket. Sometimes it's the small things that help when the best thing in your life has just been destroyed. 

That spot on her couch is a position she becomes intimately familiar with over the next week as she spends most of it numb and alone. That's not to say she doesn't cry - because she does. A lot, actually. But, it's not possible to cry through all her waking hours and her anguish is such that she has to try to shut herself off from it or else she fears she'll permanently lose her mind. 

* * *

Sometimes she does lose her mind. 

Temporarily.

Sometimes it's from sadness, because sometimes she practically sees Lena's outline in her apartment. The shape of her deceased best friend will begin to crystallise someplace or other and her heart always leaps until it hits her that this is just another grief mirage. That's when she remembers all over again that Lena really did die that night. The jagged wound in her heart rips itself open afresh and devastation floods through her so intensely that she doesn't know if she can survive it. 

She always does survive it - so far, at least - but she also always comes out the other side a little more broken than she went in. 

Other times she loses her mind from rage. 

The first time it happens is the first and only time she makes the mistake of switching on the TV. It's still set to her usual 24 hour news channel. 

"WHERE IS SUPERGIRL?" shouts the ticker, superimposed over a grainy security camera snap of National City's resident hero clutching the exsanguinated head of L-Corp in her quivering arms. The glimpse of the broadcast that Kara catches before she smacks the remote's off button with all her might is enough to incite burning anger within her.

Fury boils in her veins until she sees red and she hurls the hunk of black plastic in her hand at the television. She does so with such force that she manages to inflict a long crack upon the screen even though she's still powerless. The final violation of Lena's privacy - having images of her death beamed around the globe - is utterly infuriating and Kara herself feels sullied by the voyeurism into her private moment of grief. 

Emotional turmoil consumes her. It eats at her soul and her sanity from the inside out as Kara sinks to the ground and rakes at her face while she tries to dislodge the latest rush of traumatic memories from her brain. Her heart hammers double time inside her rib-cage and the air feels thick as she struggles to suck it into her lungs around the cavernous hole Lena cleaved in Kara's chest when she left this earth.

The concept of time becomes malleable as Kara's temporal awareness falls victim to her enraged agony and, when she eventually regains some semblance of control over herself, it's only the setting sun that tells her hours have passed. 

The next time the rage hits, it comes out of the blue. 

She's in the kitchen, miserably sipping at a glass of water when an all-encompassing fury rises out of nowhere. It crawls under her skin and pricks at her senses until she spins around and hammers her fist into the kitchen wall so she doesn't combust from an overflow of wrathful energy. 

Unfortunately for the Kryptonian, her recent hermit lifestyle and subsequent lack of sun exposure means that she still hasn't recovered from her solar flare. It therefore follows that punching the wall ends up doing far more damage to her hand than to the bricks. Her knuckles are left bruised, grazed and bleeding but at least her anger slinks back to whatever vengeful part of her psyche it escaped from. The banishment of her rage leaves her free to return to her customary position upon the couch where she whiles away the hours doing a whole lot of nothing. 

* * *

Kara has very little influence over her psychological state. Her feelings have minds of their own that they are more than happy to exercise and she frequently finds herself towed along as an unwilling passenger behind their whims. Her physical state, however, is something over which she can exert a modicum of control and she wields this particular power by deliberately enforcing her solitude.   

So she's not alone because people don't try to come around, but rather because she doesn't open the door. 

Alex shows remarkable persistence in the face of her sister's steadfast refusal to acknowledge her visits. She pops by twice a day without fail; once before work and once after. During the cumulative hours she spends shouting through Kara's stubbornly closed door, she tries everything she can think of to convince the Kryptonian to let her in. There's tough love and sympathy, small talk and bribery (of both the verbal and edible varieties) and even the odd attempt at manipulation but all she earns with her efforts is a 100% strikeout record. The reporter doesn't even give a peep in response when Alex drops the sex with Maggie bombshell but, despite Kara's unwavering commitment to stonewalling her, Alex keeps on coming back.  

She is primarily motivated by concern for her sister but Alex would be lying if she said there wasn't an element of selfish self-interest involved in her routine. Even though the Kryptonian clearly doesn't want anything to do with her, Alex continues her scheduled drops in because she needs some way to channel her grief and some way to pass her spare time. Some way, that is, that doesn't involve tripping and falling into bed with her ex - which has already happened far more often than it should have. 

Perhaps Kara will appreciate the show of sisterly determination one day but, for now, she just dreads the regular reminders that there is a world moving on outside the confines of her apartment.

Agent Danvers isn't the only one who torments Kara by stopping by to hold a one sided conversation through the door, either. Winn makes a couple of ignored trips up to the outside of Kara's loft and his approach to the situation is very... Winn. There's numerous cheesy jokes and sci-fi references that Kara doesn't really get, but Lena probably would've. He means well, of course. He's just trying to lighten the mood, but he's accidentally making things worse.

Kara actually finds his visits almost unbearable. She makes it 3 minutes into his first one before she retreats to her room and buries her head under her pillow to block out the sound of his voice. On his second visit she barely gives him 30 seconds before she flees to the bathroom and twists the faucet onto high so she doesn't have to listen to him natter.   

Meanwhile, when James comes a-knocking, he's earnestness personified and it's nothing other than annoying. It's not his fault. He is being genuine but it comes across as contrived bullshit anyway. Kara isn't normally one to swear but it turns out that the latest bout of impossibly gut-wrenching grief her life has inflicted on her has profoundly impacted her personality.  

Although the universe has been a cruel mistress over the years, it does cut the Kryptonian the tiniest bit of slack in that James only swings by once.

It's on day four of Kara's wallowing marathon that Eliza bangs upon the door and attempts to talk her way inside. She predictably pulls the mom card, but Kara is thoroughly unswayed. At first, the reporter assumes Alex has summoned her and Kara internally curses her sister for dragging their shared mother into a mess she has nothing to do with. But then the scientist launches into an impassioned exhortation to at least come to family Christmas, and that's when Kara remembers that it's December 23rd so Eliza was due in town anyway.

While that realisation leaves Kara mildly less pissed off at her sister, it doesn't contribute to the success of Eliza's appeals. She has no interest in admitting her foster-mom into her sanctum of misery, and even less interest in leaving her despondent cave to grace a celebration of joy with her melancholic presence. 

Christmas always used to be Kara's favourite time of year. The festive spirit infects her with unquenchable delight and, from her very first Christmas on Earth, Kara has always thrown herself into the silly season with unbridled enthusiasm. The jolliness of the holiday provides her with a refuge from the darkness that sometimes threatens to overwhelm her being, and she treasures its respite.

But not this year. 

This year, Lena's death has even managed to kill Kara's previously unshakable devotion to Christmas ebullience. Decorations still litter the reporter's apartment but she feels nothing other than mild distaste when they catch her eye. The thought of actually going to a Christmas lunch makes her stomach churn so violently that she won't even entertain the notion. 

There is only one category of person that Kara is willing to engage with. Food delivery drivers. She opens the door for them because, technically, she has to. She might have sunk into a quagmire of mourning, but a girl's still gotta eat and she sure as heck isn't going to head outside to go grocery shopping.

Her appetite is a fickle beast. It alternates between encouraging her to desperately eat her feelings and being so sickened by grief and guilt that the mere idea of food is enough to make her horribly nauseous. One day she eats four pizzas in one sitting, and the next she doesn't touch a morsel of anything until 2pm, at which point she sullenly picks at some leftover potstickers before dumping most of them in the trash.

That alone is indicative of the depths of Kara's despair. It is her firm opinion - no, her firm  _knowledge -_ that potstickers should NEVER be wasted. Willingly throwing away not just one, but many is the absolute height of gastronomic blasphemy yet she doesn't give a damn.

In a world that would rob a woman like Lena Luthor of her future, nothing really matters. 

* * *

On Christmas Eve, a knock sounds that's unlike all others that have come before it. It's halting nature screams of nervous hesitation and something about it compels Kara to heave herself of the couch and shuffle over to the door. When she glances through the peephole, her trademark crinkle knits between her brows at the sight before her and, once she wrangles her fingers into wrapping around the doorknob, she twists it with unusual haste. 

"Ruby?" 


	4. Fruit Ninja

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I don't really know where this came from, but it just happened. I may have taken liberties with the show's timeline but just roll with it.
> 
> Initially this was actually part of chapter 3 but then it grew beyond my reckoning and I felt it deserved a chapter of its own. You know what's infuriating though? When you've just finished a huge edit and your computer crashes when you go to hit save. I'm thrilled. Anyway, this might be shit now because I don't think my second crack at it is as good as my first but ah well. 
> 
> Oh, and writing 'mom' will never not be weird. Never.

"Ruby?"

"Hi," the teenager offers with a shy wave and Kara steps to the side to allow her passage into the loft. "I brought cupcakes."

She has indeed brought cupcakes. Alternating vanilla and chocolate with festive red and green frosting, they're encased in an adorable little basket underneath clear cellophane.

"I made them myself," Ruby elaborates as she stands just inside the threshold, holding out her gift for acceptance from the somewhat discombobulated reporter. 

"Thanks," Kara finally mumbles once she figures out how to make her body function in the manner required to reach out and take the proffered cakes. 

"Does your mom know you're here?" the Kryptonian asks, as she delicately places the basket on her kitchen island. It's the longest sentence she's spoken aloud in 5 days. 

"Nah, she's busy at work."

If Kara was more with it, she would hear the unspoken 'like always' in Ruby's tone but, as it is, she's oblivious to the teen's frustration as Ruby coughs and tries to change the subject. 

"I like your pyjamas."

She may only be 13 but Ruby is still tactful enough not to mention the multiple food stains on the fluffy fabric or the fact that it's midday. She also doesn't mention the scabs littered across Kara's knuckles or the healing scratches on her cheeks even though they're impossible to miss. 

"Thanks," Kara repeats absentmindedly as she fidgets with the edge of the cellophane. She stares off into the distance and her crinkle creeps back onto her face because she's sure there's something she's supposed to do now but, whatever it is, it's just outside the bounds of her conscious mind. The cogs in her brain grind slowly as they churn towards the vital detail she's missing but, despite the sedate pace of her thought processes, she does eventually get there. 

"I should ring Sam," she mutters, more to herself than to her house guest, as Ruby stares at the floor and pretends to be engrossed in playing with the hem of her jacket. Kara's problem is that she has no idea where her phone is. She hasn't gone near it since  _that_ night and, as a poorly paid millennial journalist, of course she doesn't have a landline.

She promptly launches into a hunt for her missing mobile and the teenager in the room observes awkwardly as Kara flaps around the apartment, lifting belongings at random in her inefficient search. 

At some point during the more than seven minute long phone forage, Ruby takes a seat at Kara's dining table. It's from there that she calls "you don't need to bother!" at the reporter while the woman in question noses around in the bathroom. "Mom's in a meeting anyway!"

Luck would have it that it's then that Kara triumphantly emerges with her previously-misplaced telecommunications device clutched in her sweaty palm. She's found it in her laundry basket, still in the back pocket of the pants she bought after Lena bled out all over her supersuit. Predictably, after nearly 6 days at the bottom of a clothes heap, the battery is almost as dead as Lena is - except unlike Lena, the phone can be revived by plugging it into a charger. 

Once that's done, Kara ambles over to the kitchen where she snags the cupcakes off the bench before she drops into the seat beside Ruby and rips open the cellophane. 

"You want one?" the reporter asks around the lump of chocolate baking she's just shoved in her mouth, and she shunts the basket towards the subdued teenager when Ruby nods her yes. The young Arias surveys her cupcake options before she carefully selects the vanilla one with the most icing and takes a bite.

The pair go through five cakes between them before anyone utters a word. (And okay, yes, it is Kara who eats four of them. She's trying to recover her strength, alright?) Speaking of Kara, she's also the one who gets around to breaking their quietly uneasy equilibrium.

"What are you doing here?" 

The question may seem rude, but Kara's tone is soft and Ruby doesn't seem offended even as she answers without making eye contact. 

"I came to see you."

Kara doesn't respond immediately because even she can see there's something more going on here. Instead, she rests her cheek on her palm and watches as Ruby picks sadly at the icing on her second cupcake. 

"Why?" she asks once it becomes apparent that the teenager isn't going to share anything more of her own accord. Ruby's recalcitrance radiates off her as strongly as heat from the sun but, after a long moment spent broodily chewing a mouthful, she answers.

"My mom cries in the shower when she thinks I can't hear her."

Kara lets the silence percolate when Ruby pauses, waiting for the youngster to organise her thoughts.

"Then she spends forever at work. I didn't even see her yesterday. And she won't tell me what's happening even though it's all over the news. I'm not a fucking child she has to hide stuff from." 

Kara's eyebrows rocket upwards when the profanity flies out of the girl she does still consider a child, but she has the presence of mind to keep her trap shut as Ruby's head of steam builds. 

"And Alex was gonna come bake with me yesterday but she didn't cos  _work._ "

'Work' was punctuated with an eyeroll so dramatic that the aforementioned Alex would be overwhelmed with pride if it occurred in a different context.

"So I did it myself," Ruby continues, waving an adolescently dismissive hand at her cupcakes. "And I know you like food so..."

"So you brought them to me?" 

As Kara asks the question she can't help but reach for a fifth helping because apparently this is an 'eat your feelings' situation. Ruby just shrugs noncommittally as she mutters, "Yeah. I thought, like... comfort food or whatever."

"Thank you," Kara says genuinely as she slides her chair back from the table, "They're delicious. And very comforting." The reporters eases herself to her feet. "I'm gonna call your mom and then I'm gonna be right back, okay?"

"Yeah, whatever."

Ruby loudly harrumphs as the reporter crosses the room and, despite the grim circumstances, the teenage attitude sends a hint of a smile ghosting across Kara's lips for the first time in almost a week. 

* * *

In order to actually dial Sam's office, Kara has to swipe aside countless notifications from the days her phone was off. Her thumb is legitimately tired by the time she pulls up the number she needs and hits call. 

Sam's completely professional, and therefore mildly unhelpful secretary answers on the second ring. Kara can only hope that his boss is paying him killer overtime for working Christmas Eve.

"Welcome to L-Corp, you're speaking with Blake. How may I help you?"

"I need to talk to Sam."

"Ms. Arias is in a meeting, but I can take a message."

"It's Kara Danvers."

"Hello Miss Danvers. Would you like me to take a message?"

Kara manages to resist the urge to groan by making a face at the wall instead.  

"It's about Ruby. She's with me."

"Wait... What?" Blake's shock is audible down the line. "She's with..?"

There's a half second pause before Blake quickly tells her "one moment please," and L-Corp's fairly decent hold music starts to play in her ear. Kara sighs and perches on the edge of her bed to pass the wait, trapping her mobile between her jaw and her shoulder so she can impatiently clean her glasses with her shirt. 

When Blake returns to the line, he's back to sounding perfectly unflappable. 

"Ms. Arias will speak with you now. I'm putting you through."

A quick series of beeps sound and then Sam's frantic voice is ringing out of the speaker. 

"Is she okay?!"

"She's fine," Kara says as she rolls her neck, drops her glasses onto her nose and curls her fingers around her phone. "But you should come get her."

"She's supposed to be at Tess'!"

"Maybe you shouldn't expect her to spend Christmas Eve with your neighbours."

Kara's tone is harsher than she intended but she has rapidly filled to the brim with righteous indignation on Ruby's behalf and Sam's following pointed silence does little to mollify her. 

"I'll be there in 20," the executive finally says as paper rustles ostentatiously in the background and Kara grinds her teeth so she doesn't say anything overly mean. Being polite though... that's a step too far, and so she signs off with a curt "you better be," before tapping the end call button with far more force than necessary. 

* * *

When Kara re-enters the lounge she finds Ruby slumped in her chair, intently focusing on her own phone as her fingers flick frenetically across the screen. 

"Whatcha doing?" the reporter asks as she retakes her seat next to the cupcakes and eyes the last chocolate one. 

"Playing Fruit Ninja," Ruby replies without so much as an upwards glance and an ominous burn starts in Kara's nasal passages as tears threaten to well under her eyelids.

"Lena loves that game," she sniffs, even though 'loved' would technically be more accurate. 

"I know," Ruby says, her brow furrowing as she fights to maintain her concentration on both the game and the conversation. "I can never beat her high score."

"How long have you been trying?" Kara inquires as she gives in to her appetite and pinches the cake that's been tempting her.

Ruby's ninja-ing pace increases. "Months."

"Yeah, well," Kara starts, before pausing to lick icing off her fingers. "She's a literal genius, so don't feel bad." 

"I don't think you have to be a genius to cut cartoon fruit."

The sass is strong, and Kara lets out the smallest damp chuckle as the corner of Ruby's mouth twitches. 

"Your mom says she'll be here in 20 minutes."

Kara instantly regrets mentioning Sam when a heavy darkness crosses Ruby's features. 

"Uh huh..."

The glimmer of a good mood that had been developing is thoroughly smothered and guilt settles deep in the pit of Kara's stomach as Ruby swipes aggressively at her phone. The Kryptonian can feel herself sinking into an introspective depression until a sudden exclamation from the teen yanks her back up to Earth.

"Fuck!"

"Do you talk like that around your mother?" Kara asks, trying not to sound too scandalised as Ruby angrily drops her phone and sends it skittering across the table. 

"Nah. But you're cool. Mom is... mom."

Even if Kara wanted to argue the premise, she couldn't, because she never gets a chance to talk.

"I was so close! I just needed one more goddamn banana!"

"I have no idea what that means," Kara admits, and Ruby shakes her head with a mirthless laugh. 

"You're missing out."

"Lena said that too."

"She is smart."

"Will you show me?"

Kara's request is tenderly tentative and Ruby looks at her with something a lot like pity clear in her eyes. If it were coming from an adult Kara would find it unbearable but, from a 13 year old, the sympathy is far less grating. 

The Kryptonian never had played Fruit Ninja while Lena was alive, despite more than one friend trying to talk her into it. Allegedly it was addictively fun, but Kara had learned early on in the smartphone age that superhuman strength and speed don't mix well with mobile games. However, given that she's currently powerless...

She'll take whatever connection to Lena she can get. 

Ruby is a kind and patient teacher as she guides the reporter through all her tips and tricks but Kara, for her part, is a terrible student. Not because she doesn't listen, and not because she doesn't try but just because she's useless at the game. Her score never tops 100 in arcade mode and as for classic... well... if there's a bomb then Kara will slice it. The adolescent Arias actively winces as she watches the trainwreck in action, until they're interrupted by a berserk banging from the front of the apartment. 

The reporter swiftly hands the phone back to Ruby who sticks the device in her pocket and stares at the table while Kara hurries to the door. When she swings it open, an overwrought and exhausted Samantha is revealed. The executive looks like she's been practically tearing her hair out on the ride over but Kara's compassion for her is minimal. Her limited empathy reserves have already been emptied onto Sam's daughter. 

"She needs you," the reporter hisses under her breath as Sam rushes past her, just loud enough for the other woman to hear and it makes Sam hesitate until Kara finishes her thought. "Sometimes work can wait. Even Lena knew that."

Kara can't decide if that's a low blow or not as a pained expression flutters across Sam's face, but she can decide that she doesn't care. The executive, meanwhile, quickly regathers her composure and schools her features as she hustles to Ruby's side. 

"Hey Rubes," she says apologetically as she drops into a crouch beside her daughter's chair. 

"Hey mom," Ruby replies disdainfully while she looks anywhere other than at her mother, and Sam has to bite the inside of her cheek as a tsunami of regret rips through her. 

"I'm so sorry," she almost pleads but Ruby just crosses her arms over her chest and perseveres with her steadfast avoidance of eye contact. 

"You're always sorry."

Even Kara's heart stings at that comment. Sam's practically shatters. 

"I know baby..." she says sadly as she reaches out to run her fingers through Ruby's brunette locks and, to her immense relief, the teen doesn't pull away. "I'm... sorry."

It's a limp finish but Ruby can't help but soften. 

"Can we go home and watch Home Alone?" she asks hopefully, twisting in her chair to finally lay eyes on her mom. 

"Of course! Anything you want!" Sam exclaims. "We can even make doughnut holes first."

Now that's an offer Ruby can't resist. She breaks out in a grin and Sam smiles back at her as she draws herself up to her full height. Once the executive is standing she affectionately ruffles her daughter's hair, earning herself an exasperated "mom..." for her trouble. 

"You're ruining my look," the teenager whines without any real venom. 

"You're too young to have a look" Sam retorts as she starts towards the exit and Ruby snorts derisively. 

"That's what old people think."

"Yeah Sam, that's what old people think," Kara echoes mockingly from her spot near the door and the executive is about to glare at her but then she spots the friendly twinkle in the reporter's eye. Sam nearly throws out a jibe about the fact that Kara is technically 50, but that's a nugget of information that Ruby isn't allowed to know yet. Instead, she wraps her arm around her daughter's shoulders and pulls Ruby tight against her side as they linger in the doorway. 

"Thank you for having her."

"She's welcome any time. So long as she tells you first," Kara replies, before she turns her attention to the aforementioned 'she'. "Thanks again for the cupcakes. You could be a baker or something."

"And what? Get up at like stupid o'clock or whatever? High key no," Ruby scoffs with that particular strain of disgust that teenagers have perfected throughout human history. 

"I don't think all bakers wake up before dawn," Kara argues defensively and Sam stifles a giggle as her daughter rolls her eyes. 

"Yeah well, still no. It's not the 50s anymore," the young Arias rejoins snarkily. "Women can have ambitions outside the kitchen, you know."

"I... do know actually," Kara replies with her eyebrows yoinked high. "Is she like this at home?" the reporter asks, pivoting slightly to face the very smug old(er) Arias. 

"Oh, she's going easy on you," Sam claims, leaning her cheek fondly on top of Ruby's head. 

"It's true," the teenager deadpans and Kara huffs out a brief laugh before she spots the way Sam is looking at her. 

"Is there anything..." the executive starts, but she leaves the 'I can do?' unsaid because Kara is already vigorously shaking her head no. 

"Okay kiddo," Sam says instead, herding Ruby into the hall with a pat on the back. "We should get going."

* * *

The very first thing Kara does once the Arias family departs is to retreat to her room and retrieve her phone from its charger. 48% will have to do for now. She taps into the app store as she makes her way to her home on the couch and then snuggles under her blanket while the download begins. As soon as Fruit Ninja finishes installing, she flicks her device into airplane mode. She doesn't want to deal with anybody (namely Alex) trying to contact her while she loses herself in the strongest link she has to Lena right now. 

She plays for hours. Literally. The only break she takes is to fetch the charger when her phone starts harassing her with low battery warnings. Aside from that, she ninjas uninterrupted until it's well after nightfall and her thumbs honest-to-goodness ache from exertion. On the plus side, though, she finally achieves a score over 200. 

Oh, and she makes it nearly six hours without crying. 

That's two records in one day. 


	5. Mortality management plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I don't really know where this came from other than the part of my brain that misses Lena too. It just happened. Pulling this together was quite the journey. There's so much that got written and cut, from multiple perspectives and I dunno. This is what's left at the end.

Before she's brutally murdered in the streets of National City, Lena Luthor thinks a lot about death.

Specifically, she thinks a lot about her own death.

It's not a surprising fixation.

You'd think a lot about death too if you were attacked as often as she is.

* * *

She's 15 years and 11 days old when someone first threatens to snuff her out of existence.

It's all Cathy fucking McGuire's fault. She and her merry band of bitches are so completely insufferable that Lena cuts class just to catch a break from their bullshit. Despite the fact she grew up with Lillian and is therefore no stranger to emotional abuse, the constant taunting about everything from her adoption to her suspected lesbianism to her glasses is sometimes too much for even Lena to bear. Mostly she does cope admirably, but today... she's really not in the goddamn mood to sit through an hour of insults hissed from the back of European Politics. Especially when there's no point in her being there because she already understands the material better than her tutor does.

So she doesn't go. She knows she's going to get in deep shit for wagging but, quite frankly, she can't bring herself to care. She's spent so long trying so hard to follow every rule in a tragically hopeless attempt to gain approval (from Lillian more than anyone else) but that's been about as successful as the Treaty of Versailles so why not go a little wild?

Going 'a little wild' by Lena's standard involves meandering through Cork for an hour, happily pretending she never has to return to school. She maintains that blissful illusion until a grandfather clock tolls 11 times while she's perusing an adorable little used bookshop. 11am.

11am signifies the end of her brief freedom. At 11:30 she has an advanced physics exam, and not even Cathy "my mother is the Deputy Headmistress" McGuire will make her miss it. Lena may hate her classmates with a fiery passion, but she isn't going to let them provoke her into destroying her academic career. She's angry and bitter, not stupid.

The young Luthor makes quick work of the walk back to St. Agatha's School for Girls, striding purposely towards the imposing collection of stone structures. Indeed, she's so fast that she can afford to waste a moment lingering outside the the gates before she enters.

What a fateful minute that will turn out to be.

She's staring up at the formidable walls of St. Agatha's, dreading the claustrophic judgement contained within them, when the hard muzzle of a gun is pressed against her ribcage. Lena's heart seizes with fear and panic clouds her brain as a man whispers darkly in her ear.

"Get in the fuckin' van or I'll blow you to kingdom come."

Her mind spins frantically as she assesses her options in the split second she has available. She's read enough crime novels to know you should never go quietly with a kidnapper to a second location, but the cold barrel nudging at her chest is making a convincing counter-argument. The idea of taking a bullet to the lung is... unappealing to say the least. So, in the end, she betrays general recommendations and allows herself to be bundled into the back of a white flower van.

As soon as the door clangs shut behind her, a black sack is thrown over her head and her limbs are violently ziptied together. The warmth around her face is overpowering as her own breath turns the inside of the fabric bag into a sauna and Lena feels faint from the abominable combination of heat and heavy dread. Between that and the way her legs are being repeatedly stabbed by rose thorns, Lena is distinctly uncomfortable as she's whisked off to god knows where.

Her accommodations are barely more generous when they reach their destination. She's not being impaled by plant barbs anymore, but she is strapped tightly to a chair in a damp basement that has mildew creeping up the walls and mould populating the ceiling. Not that she knows that though, because her vision is still obscured by the sack blindfold.

She spends 14 petrifying hours, 12 sickening minutes and 26 fretful seconds trapped in that room.

It's 14 hours of blood chilling fear that she's about to get a case of lead to the head.

It's 58% of a day spent in dank darkness, breathing mostly her own humid exhaled air.

It's 852 minutes of anxiously dwelling on what other cruel tortures her captors may dream up.

It's 8% of a week spent in immense physical discomfort as her body screams and seizes from being restrained in a single position.

And then, after exactly 51,146 seconds, it's over. The hostage rescue team comes crashing down the stairs and Lena is hustled out of the basement almost as roughly as she was dragged in.

She may not feel lucky as she's lead towards a waiting ambulance, but she is. She's lucky in that the men who attempted to extort the Luthors by kidnapping their least favourite child are utterly incompetent criminals.

Anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together can probably guess that using their sister's branded flower van to stage an abduction isn't the greatest idea. Especially since it's 2007 and of course the entrance to St. Agatha's is covered in CCTV. But Lena's captors... well... they don't even employ fake plates. The Gardaí may not always be the best police force in the world, but they can't mess up this investigation.

Once Lena is medically cleared and her preliminary interview is complete she's promptly delivered back to St. Agatha's. One might think that Lillian would show a modicum of care following her daughter's ordeal but that simply isn't her style. She is, however, witheringly incensed by the fact that Lena was off school grounds during class hours.

That much is made perfectly clear during the frigid phonecall Lena receives shortly after being released from protective custody - in which Lillian deems it necessary to subtly, yet viciously shred her daughter for being such an irresponsible and idiotic failure that she got herself abducted. It would hurt, except Lena is so used to Lillian's callous disregard for her well being that she barely notices this latest example.

What she does notice, though, is the inexorable inevitability of her own mortality. As she recovers from the trauma of her time in captivity, a deep understanding of her finite lifespan's fragility embeds itself in her consciousness. That cognizance lingers in the background of her every decision from that moment forwards and, as it turns out, she's right to be wary.

Between that first incident and when she actually dies, Lena is the target of so many assassination plots and other murder attempts that she loses count. By the end, her bar for what qualifies as a genuine life-or-death situation is stratospherically high because otherwise she'd feel imperiled every other month. Being literally thrown off a building is a legitimate threat, but being shot at by someone who misses by several feet? That's so mild she'll almost forget about it within days.

Really, it's a cruel kind of irony that when someone finally succeeds in killing her, she isn't actually the intended victim. Maybe all her failed murderers had just tried too hard.

* * *

Lena is a planner. She always was, and she always is right up until her demise.

Her life is frequently chaotic, and rarely entirely within her control - particularly when she's young. So she plans whatever she can plan, down to the smallest detail, because it provides her with a comforting element of predictability that is otherwise totally lacking. It shouldn't necessarily be a surprise then, to anyone who truly knows her, that she has plans for the aftermath of her death.

They begin during dark nights in Ireland, when she has to leave the lights on lest she be transported back to the terror of that basement. Plotting out her end of life wishes somehow allows her to keep a lid on the otherwise suffocating panic that tries to smother her sanity as every noise sets her nerves on edge. At the time she's still a minor and therefore subject to the whims of her legal guardians but nevertheless, as she lies in bed trying desperately not to hyperventilate, she's already thinking ahead.

Within a week of turning 18, she springs into action. She uses her newly accessible trust fund money to place the pre-eminent family law expert in Massachusetts on retainer and drafts an iron-clad will that not even Lillian could sue a hole in. She also purchases a grave plot not far from MIT so she won't have to spend eternity entombed in the Luthor mausoleum. She can think of little worse than being interred with those majestic arseholes for the rest of forever. She much prefers the resting place she's chosen for herself beneath a gnarled oak, where her body can safely decompose away from the shadow of her family.

Throughout her college years, as she flits between Cambridge and Metropolis, she periodically adapts, adds to or alters her death contingencies. These changes tend to be incremental - a new charity included in her will here, an associate removed from the funeral invitation list there. There are really no major adjustments until she moves to National City. Relocating her entire life and livelihood necessitates a drastic overhaul that involves reworking nearly every detail.

It is in this process that the Death Binder is born. That's what her assistant Jess jokingly calls it in her head, even though she wouldn't dare use the term out loud. Personally, Lena prefers to think of it as her mortality management plan but to each their own.

Because Lena is an exceedingly thorough human being, the Death Binder contains an extensive array of papers. Enclosed within its hard navy cover is every legal document and piece of personal guidance that could possibly be needed to execute her post-passing plans without a hitch. From her will to her insurance policies. Her company line of succession and her deathday guest list. From her chosen church to her pre-selected casket. Her new National City grave plot record and her approved funeral director. The Death Binder lists it all.

(And yes, L-Corp's CEO does intend to have her funeral service at a church. She may be firmly and publicly agnostic in life, but that doesn't mean she won't hedge her bets in death. Better safe than sorry, right?)

The mortality management plan is of such significance that Jess is introduced to it within three days of starting her job. She is taken quite by surprise, but in retrospect she probably could've expected something like this. The clause in her contract that noted a five figure bonus for arranging Lena's funeral if so required should have made her suspicious.

Jess never believes she will cash that bonus. She knows that Lena is deadly serious about the Death Binder, but she's convinced that her boss is just being unnecessarily obsessive and over-prepared. Given that she doesn't know Lena's full history it's easy to be glib, but perhaps it would've been wise to take more heed of the CEO's concerns. Lena is obsessive and over-prepared, but fate will prove that it is not unnecessary.

Or, maybe it's not fate. Maybe it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe Lena's utter conviction that she isn't destined to reach old age kills any self-preservation instinct that might have stopped her from throwing herself in harm's way to save Kara.

Kara. Who isn't supposed to die young. Kara. Who the world needs alive. Kara. Who isn't expendable.  _Kara_. Who she loves.

Because that's the thing. Lena loves Kara far more than she loves herself and the world needs Kara far more that it has ever needed a Luthor. So maybe then, when in an instant it comes down to choosing between her life and Kara's... it never really feels like a choice at all.

And you know what? Lena is entirely at peace with that. For her, Kara's survival is so paramount that the Kryptonian being okay is the only thing that eases her pain as she haemorrhages away her last seconds on this earth. At least this way her death serves a purpose.

* * *

It is worth noting that the Death Binder Jess encountered on that day those years ago differs significantly from the one the assistant implements when Lena is gunned down by her mother's henchman. It turns out that gaining actual friends has a substantial impact on what the CEO wants to do with her assets once she's deceased.

She never does tell her new beneficiaries what she intends to gift them though. Her wealth is a topic that generally isn't openly discussed because there is something slightly awkward about earning more in a day than her friends do in a year. With that in mind, 'hey, I'm probably going to die before I'm 30 and if I do I'm leaving you millions of dollars' seems like an uncomfortable conversation that Lena isn't keen on having.

Instead, she delegates responsibility for passing on that tidbit of information to her executor. The super-clan is certainly in for quite the surprise when Laurel Chen does her job.

* * *

The funeral does go almost exactly as Lena envisions it, both in terms of arrangement and the service itself. Her planning is meticulous after all, and Jess is nothing if not excellent at following instructions - even when she's so grief stricken that she cries every night on the train home from work. However, no amount of planning can fully account for the vagaries of reality and as such there are some developments that Lena never foresaw.

For example, she was never presumptuous enough to add the President of the United States to the guest list and she wouldn't have invited Superman even if he asked. And yet, guess who shows up?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for kinda, probably, slightly insulting the Irish police? Don't hate me, lol. And I swear some plot movement will start happening soon. Kara might even leave her apartment.


	6. Introduction to an existential crisis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's dropped by to give this a read, a kudos or a comment. I rarely have time to reply to comments but I want you to know that I read them all and they're super appreciated. Always makes me smile :)
> 
> You can all blame Mlod for this because if I have permission to go slow and be thorough, then I will go slow and be thorough. It's not necessarily as edited as I would like but I'm posting it anyway. It's already been through like... 3 or 4 reworkings and I've read so much about research methods today that I can't be bothered proofreading this anymore so sorry for any mistakes. I'm still not convinced about the flow or anything but at this point, fuck it. Here it is.

It's not that Kara's been dreading this day ever since Jess slipped the details under her door. It's just that Kara has been dreading this day ever since Jess slipped the details under her door. 

The funeral.

The farewell.

The end.

It's not like she didn't know it was coming. When people die, on both Earth and on Krypton, they have funerals. There's no reason why Lena would be an exception. Yet it didn't feel real, ominous or impending until the invitation came.

She's going to have to get dressed.

She's going to have to go outside.

She's going to have to say goodbye.

She's not ready.

* * *

It's the day after Christmas when she receives the dreaded delivery. Jess' staccato knock is fast and clear, but Kara can't bring herself to answer even as the assistant calls through the door. The reporter doesn't want to be rude, but coming face-to-face with Lena's dedicated sidekick would be too much for her fragile psyche to withstand. It would be too vivid a reminder of what she's lost and she's not willing to take the risk when she's barely holding it together as it is. 

Jess wastes little of her valuable time waiting around for the reclusive Kryptonian. She quickly slides the folded invitation through the gap between the door and floor, and departs without delay while Kara remains suckered to the couch. Minutes slither by before the reporter creaks up to standing and she finds her eyes fixating on the paper on the ground as she shuffles towards it with leaden feet. Who knew that a thin sliver of pulped and macerated plant matter could be so intimidating. 

Her knees crack and pop when she crouches down to pinch the invitation between her stiff thumb and forefinger. She can't be 100% sure of what it is but she can guess and, because she can guess, she's afraid. The specifics of her fear are murky, but its presence is undeniable. She squats for a long while, hovering above the floor as she stares at the blank back of the page. She's trying to work up her courage, but summoning it is a struggle. When her knees begin to cramp, she slumps down and hunches over crossed legs, appealing for a flash of bravery.

It never comes. 

Eventually, she just unfurls the paper with shaking fingers even though she's so apprehensive that she squints her eyes closed as the invitation crinkles open. That's why she fails to notice the other note that falls out of the parcel and skids under the kitchen counter. 

The process of easing her eyes open is a slow one but once her vision is no longer blurred by her eyelashes, it's hard not to break down. A fittingly regal image of Lena adorns the top of the page and it's the first time since she died that Kara has seen her outside dreams or hallucinations. It hits her harder than a Red Tornado punch to the throat. She's never going to see her again.

Well, that's not strictly true. It's an open casket funeral. 

But she'll never see her alive again. She'll never touch her again. She'll never talk to her again. Lena's gone. 

It's not new information but, until now, there was some small part of her that didn't truly believe it. A part of her that burrowed into blissful delusion so it didn't have to confront the heartbreaking truth. A part of her that coped because it's convinced this is a sadistic nightmare she's due to wake from at any second. Kara never realised how much she relied on that part until the picture of Lena crushes its last vestige of illusionary hope under the cruel weight of reality. 

The invitation is unintentionally crumpled in her hand as she curls into a ball on her cold hardwood floors. Grief hammers her with an acuity close to that which tormented her while Lena's life flowed into nothingness in her arms. It's devastating. She's devastated. 

At some point, the intensity ebbs and Kara is able to peel herself off the floor. She returns to some semblance of normal on the outside, but mentally she never recovers. Any Ruby-and-Fruit-Ninja related progress she may have made is obliterated in an instant by a single sheet of high quality presentation paper. 

Back to being a wreck she goes. 

* * *

The sky is stunningly clear and the crisp air reverberates with bird calls as the sun rises on the 28th. Between the noise and the light, Kara can't resist consciousness no matter how much she may want to. The only thing she wants more than to stay asleep, is to be able to stop time. If she was Barry Allen she would sprint away from 10:30am as quickly as her legs could carry her - rules of time travel be damned. 

But, she's not the Flash. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective) she's not any other kind of time traveler either. Therefore, no amount of desire makes her capable of halting the inexorable trickle of seconds that drives the clock forwards.   

Since she can't solve her problems by breaking time, she tries a lot of other things instead. 

Nobody, including her, would call her Plan A a good idea. She is aware that it's irrational to think that maybe she can avoid today if she just never moves, but that doesn't mean she won't give it her best shot anyway. 

Her best shot is a valiant effort. She stays stock still on her side, under the covers, for nearly an hour as the ache in her hip ratchets up in severity. By the time she gives in to the pain and rolls onto her back, the ache is so intense that she's worried she might actually have a pressure sore. This taste of human fragility is one of the real downsides of blowing out her powers. 

She groans. It's a smidge after 7:30 and hiding from the inevitable no longer seems like a viable option. That's okay though, because she's thought of a Plan B. Operation Eat Your Feelings is a go. 

As soon as she reaches the kitchen, Plan B hits a major snag. She hasn't been grocery shopping in nearly 10 days and all the Christmas leftovers Alex dropped round have already been consumed. She scarfs down the entire half-empty packet of stale graham crackers that she scavenges out of the pantry, but it's hardly enough to take the edge off. Plan B is a dismal failure.

It's turns out that's not a bad thing. 

She's inhaling a pottle of slightly-past-its-used-by greek yoghurt when she catches sight of the time on the microwave.

8am.

T minus two point five.

As the fluorescent green numbers blink and taunt her, an unpleasantly familiar sensation begins to churn in her gut. Plan C: Vomit Your Feelings isn't on her agenda but her body is exercising its ability to make independent decisions. Kara manages to race to the sink just in time to coat the metal tub with a vile mixture of bile and semi-digested carbohydrates. Gross. 

The reporter stays bent over the bench with her heart pounding like a roofer laying tiles, and sweat beading along her hairline until she's certain the puking is finished. Only then does she wipe her mouth with a dish cloth and flick the tap on to wash away the mess. She should drink something, but the idea of putting anything else in her stomach is repulsive so she staggers over to the table and sags into a chair instead. 

The Kryptonian sits there, sad and weak, until 8:30.

At T minus two she knows that, in her current state, if she doesn't start leaving prep now then not even Rao will get her to the funeral on schedule. 

Getting dressed is hard. For one, it's been a while since she's done it and for two, she doesn't own a lot of black. That was always more Lena's style. Kara has to litter three quarters of her wardrobe across her bedroom but eventually she does find a suitably morose sweater and a pair of dark work pants. 

If finding clothes was a challenge, then actually putting them on is a Herculean task. She tries to make herself look presentable, but she's impeded by the fact that she lacks both the energy and the motivation to make any effort. She's just lucky that her attire isn't wrinkled and twisting her hair into a bun masks how little trouble she's gone to. Makeup though, that just isn't happening. If she looks sallow and tragic then so be it. 

It's once her appearance is as passable as it's going to get that she makes tracks towards the entrance-way. The sound of her shoes clacking against wood is unnervingly foreign after a week padding around in socks. She takes a deep breath as she slings her bag over her shoulder and then yanks the door open before she can freak out. 

If she thinks too much, she's going to get overwhelmed. If she gets overwhelmed, she won't leave. If she doesn't leave, she'll miss the funeral. Failing to attend would be such an insult to Lena's memory that it's not an option. And so, she clomps over to the elevator even though she's so uncomfortable about leaving her apartment that any armchair-psych would probably accuse her of agoraphobia. Her back wants to collapse into a hunch after she presses the down button, but she forces it up straight. Just because she feels like a disaster, doesn't mean she should slouch like a teenager. 

While the lift squeaks down to the lobby, Kara pointedly avoids her blurry reflection in the smoky mirror. Looking at herself does nothing other than set off another wave of self-loathing and, to be honest, she has enough of that without help.  

Stepping outside for the first time in eight days is startling. The abrupt temperature change from the cosy 75 degrees of her building to the nippy 60 degrees of the street is a shock that she should've been, but isn't, prepared for. The cold isn't usually an issue, but she hasn't been this chilly since  _then_ and the brisk air is enough to trigger an unwelcome flood of memories.

Her chin drops to her chest when the torrent hits. The carnage. The noise. The blood. Lena. 

The line between reality and memory is blurring in her traumatised mind.  

Lena's dying. Lena's dying and Kara is doing nothing to save her. 

The Kryptonian is on the brink of slipping away when her head snaps up. Power buzzes through her body. Solar radiation. This is her first sun sun exposure since the solar flare and her system soaks it up with unbridled exuberance. It makes her skin crawl. As strength coils in her muscles, she almost wants to tear them off her bones. What good is strength if she can't save her people? What good is being bulletproof if the woman she loves gets shot to death to protect her anyway? What good is being Supergirl if everyone still gets hurt?

From where she stands on the sidewalk, trapped somewhere between a flashback and an existential crisis, it requires every scrap of resilience she possesses to force herself to step forward and hail a cab. She must look nearly as dreadful as she feels when she clambers into the back of the yellow taxi because the driver asks if she's okay even before he gets her destination. 

Kara doesn't know how she would answer that question even if she wanted to. There aren't enough words in any of the languages she speaks to describe how not okay she is. In lieu of a direct response, she just hands over the address and thuds her head against the window. Through the glass, she watches the city sights as they flash past but she doesn't truly see them. Her brain can't process the signals from her optic nerves properly because it can't stop dwelling on the way she destroys everything she comes into contact with. 

Kyrpton. Extinct. Kenny Li. Dead. Jeremiah. Held by Cadmus. Eliza. Effectively widowed. Astra. Dead. Mon-el. Banished. Lena. Dead. The accidental trail of wreckage she creates wherever she goes is almost unmatched by any reasonable human. As far as she's concerned, nobody can deny that she's a danger to anyone unfortunate enough to be close to her.

It would be so very easy to wallow in guilt-ridden introspection for the entire cab ride. There are, after all, so many things to feel bad about. Her driver though, has other ideas. He's chatty and tactless, not content to leave his passenger in miserable peace. 

"This is the place for the Luthor funeral, right?"

His voice is far too bright for Kara's liking. She briefly considers lasering his head off through the back of his seat but she can concede that curiosity probably isn't a crime worthy of the death penalty. 

"I always thought she was rotten like the rest of that family," he continues, despite Kara's prickling lack of engagement. Since she can't murder him, the Kryptonian just wants to throw herself out of the car instead. Who cares if it's travelling at 50mph. It's not like she'll get injured. 

"But maybe she was a good 'un. Didya know she saved Supergirl?"

 _I'm going to her funeral, of course I know!_ Kara shouts in her head but, externally, nothing squeaks out between her firmly pursed lips.

She does really regret her decision to catch a cab, though. Her loft is in a slightly questionable neighbourhood, far from the city centre. It has to be. There's no other way she'd be able to afford such a large apartment on her CatCo salary and it's not like the DEO pays her. Because of her location, the journey to St. Matthew-in-the-city will take at least half an hour and if the driver keeps talking like this the whole way then... she'll lose grip on her self control and either kill him or, more likely, herself. She's not sure which she'd prefer. 

The cabbie may be unaware of the peril he's in, but he does take merciful heed of Kara's caustic silence. He utters not another word for the rest of the trip, leaving the reporter to marinate in her malaise. As the car rolls through neighbourhood after neighbourhood, anxiety and trepidation conglomerate into a rock of angst in the middle of her chest. It's almost like she's swallowed a literal boulder. When they finally roll up near the church, the ride that once felt interminably long now feels like it was hours too short. She's still not ready. But she is here now, and she's not rich enough to pay to sit in the back of a stationary taxi. 

The street she trudges down towards the church is practically deserted. National City has been drained of its residents as people evacuate for the holidays, and the road isn't yet parked out by funeral attendees because Kara is early. Very early actually, but as she will soon discover, not earlier than the contingent of security hired to cover the event. 

She's 50ft away when her hands begin to tremble. She squeezes them into tight fists to stop the shaking, digging her fingernails into her palms, but it's fruitless. They continue to quiver at her sides as she clunks up the front steps of St. Matthew. It's a gorgeous little Episcopal church with stunning stained glass art that even Kara can admire through her despondence. She's about to stride bravely through the red doors and into the vestibule when suddenly there's a man mountain in her path. 

"ID please, ma'am."

The request takes her entirely by surprise. She blinks stupidly at the enormous, stoney-faced security guard until it clicks that she needs her licence. Given that she can fly, doesn't own a car and doesn't drink, it's not something she has to find often. That's why locating it in her purse is such a mission. A cringeworthy minute passes as she sifts through loyalty card after loyalty card (who knew she went to so many coffee shops) but then she's rescued by an angel in the form of Jessica Huang. Lena's [former?]-assistant is immaculately put together as she sweeps out of the church with sadness glistening in her dark eyes. 

"She's clear," Jess tries to instruct the doorman, wrapping an arm around Kara's shoulders but he just shakes his giant shaven head. 

"That's not protocol ma'am. I need ID."

"Glenn. Come on. Screw protocol," Jess fires back. It's unexpected. Kara had never envisaged that kind of attitude from her. Jess always seemed like such a stickler for the rules. 

"She's with me," the assistant continues, fixing Glenn with the kind of withering glare that she learned from the best. Lena would be proud, especially since it works a treat. The guard acquiesces with a curt nod and steps aside to allow the women entry. Much to Kara's relief, she doesn't have to awkwardly shrug off Jess' arm because it drops away as soon as they start to move. 

"If you want to see her, she's up there," the assistant offers as they reach the nave, directing Kara with glance towards the front of the room. The encouragement isn't necessary, but it's nice because the reporter needs all the emotional fortitude she can muster. Because there it is. There  _she_ is.

Kara can't actually see her yet, but she knows. She knows that Lena is there, nestled in dark mahogany.

The Kryptonian's vision tunnels as she stutters towards the casket and she misses the knowing look Jess shoots her way. 

* * *

Jess is shooting knowing looks because she does know. Her boss and the CatCo reporter (who everyone just pretends isn't Supergirl even though it's obvious) were so blatantly in love with each other that it may as well have been spelled out in neon lights. It was to Jess' immense frustration that they never acted on it. If she was less professional she would've been tempted to intervene to save them from their own emotional density. But, because she understands appropriate workplace behaviour, she instead had to watch from afar as they played out their endless 'we're dating without the kissing' dance. 

Well, she supposes now that it wasn't endless. Because this happened. Because Lena died. She just wishes they'd taken their chance. 

* * *

Kara's perception of the journey up the aisle is that is takes an age although in actuality it takes less than 30 seconds, even with her glacial pace. When the top of Lena's head comes into view, she pauses. She needs a moment to gird herself for what's to come. Her next steps reveal Lena in her entirety and the sharp intake of breath that jolts Kara's lungs is utterly involuntary. 

The CEO looks peaceful. Kara could almost be fooled into thinking she's asleep except the telltale stillness of her chest is a dead giveaway that she's... well... dead. Tragically, that much hasn't changed since Kara last lay eyes on her.  

What has changed is that she's less blood-soaked. A lot less blood-soaked. Somehow, that gifts the Kryptonian a strange kind of solace even as she's battered by a maelstrom of emotions. There's anger and love, agony and guilt, and oddly... appreciation. Appreciation for the tastefully high collared shirt Jess chose to hide the grisly wound in the CEO's neck. Kara is confronted enough by Lena's corpse without having to see the ghastly bullet hole that haunts her nightmares. 

The whirlwind of feelings swirling through her fades into the background when Kara falls into a reverent trance beside the CEO's coffin. The reporter is so absorbed in memorising every line, plane and detail of Lena's face that she hardly notices the tears staining her cheeks. If this is the last time she gets to see Lena in the flesh then she's going to make the most of it. Film - still or in motion - could never truly do the Luthor justice and the idea of forgetting Lena's magnificence is unthinkable. 

The Kryptonian isn't sure how long she stands there, staring down at the woman who she never got to love the way she wanted to. The woman who should have so much future stretching out ahead of her. The woman who had so much good left to do. The woman who shouldn't have died. 

But then Glenn's voice rings out, loud and harsh, and the moment is over. 

"ID please, sir."

"Oh. Of course. Uh, hold on."

Kara doesn't recognise the man who creeps into the church and sits near the back but she presumes he's important if he's invited. His arrival is also Kara's cue to end her vigil. The reporter takes one last long, lingering glance at her best friend and then turns to take a place in the front pew, wiping her nose on her sleeve as she goes. As she palms tear tracks off her cheeks, she appreciates that her lack of eyeliner makes it easier to hide the evidence of her crying. 

She can't say where her newfound aversion to public displays of grief has come from, but it's strong. It's also just one aspect of the emotional storm that whips back up to overtake her as other mourners filter into the church. She must be giving off some kind of vibe because, as the pews fill, nobody dares approach her. Nobody that is, except Alex, who Kara detects as a looming presence even before the agent enters her field of view. 

The younger Danvers' teeth instinctively grind as she prepares herself for the attempted conversation that she is neither ready for, nor interested in. She loves Alex. She does. But Alex isn't only her sister. She's also a covert government agent and, at the moment, Kara can't think of her without thinking of the DEO. Without thinking of Supergirl. Without thinking of the role that Supergirl - that  _she -_ played in Lena's death. Without thinking of Agent Danvers pulling Supergirl off Lena's still-warm body so the DEO could whisk her away. She can't think about Alex without remembering, and right now she needs to remember as little as possible. 

It's the only way she can survive. 

* * *

Alexandra Danvers knows she's not the best at sensitivity. Or patience. Really, she's a human bulldozer in complicated emotional situations. She pushes and pushes and pushes until she gets somewhere. Until she gets anywhere. Even if that anywhere is worse than where she began. 

It's really fucking hard, but she is trying to suppress that wrecking ball instinct with Kara and her grief. She  _trying_ to give the Kryptonian whatever time and space she needs. Yes, she has shown up at her sister's apartment every day but she hasn't taken a battering ram to the door and forced her way inside. In Alex's opinion, that's a success. But, just because she's having a lot of practice at disobeying her impulses, doesn't mean it's getting easier. In this moment, all she wants to do is open her mouth to speak. To say something. To say anything. To comfort, or connect, or provoke. 

She doesn't do that. 

Her other inclination is to plonk herself down right next to Kara so the reporter can't ignore her anymore. 

She doesn't do that either. 

Kara is edgy, her jaw working furiously in response to her sister's proximity and Alex doesn't actually want to cause a scene in the middle of Lena's funeral. She does have some sense of decorum. So, through a monumental effort, she stuffs her confrontational urges into some remote part of her brain and pivots to take a seat in the pews across the aisle. The agent can't help but watch Kara in her peripheral vision and the reporter visibly relaxes once the threat of sisterly interaction is removed. Alex doesn't need more pain but she would be lying if she said it didn't hurt. 

She lost someone that night, too. 

She and Lena may not have got off on the right foot - or even on any foot, really - but once they got past the assumptions and hostility, Alex found the CEO to be dedicated, loyal, whip-smart and principled. It was impossible not to respect her and the fact that she let Alex drive her eyewateringly expensive cars on occasion didn't damage her case either. 

(The eyewateringly expensive cars that, according to Laurel Chen, Alex now has to negotiate custody of with Maggie. That hasn't sunk in yet.)

Over time and thanks to Kara, Lena became family. Alex grew to love her like an honorary sister with a bond that was fierce, close and treasured. Then Lena went and got herself killed to save Alex's actual sister, leaving an aching absence behind in her wake. 

It hurts like a motherfucker. 

It hurts so much that there are nights when Alex revisits her post-breakup flirtation with alcoholism just so she can pass out without thinking. On other nights she falls asleep after falling into other things with her ex. It's a habit that she knows is distinctly unhealthy, but she indulges anyway. She can't seem to stop herself. She doesn't really want to stop herself yet. 

It would all be bad enough without feeling like she was losing her Kara as well. Her sister won't even look at her and, quite frankly, Alex can't understand why. She can't understand why Kara is practically treating her like she was the one who shot Lena that night. 

The elder Danvers is falling down a familiar mental spiral when Maggie slides into the spot next to her. Alex's distress must be written on her face because the detective lays a reassuring hand on her knees and scoots over so their sides are pressed together. It's a terrible idea. This isn't just grief-fucking in the dark so they don't have to feel so bad for an hour or two. This is physical and emotional intimacy in the cold light of day. It's a disaster waiting to happen. 

No. Correction. It's an active disaster and Alex is doing nothing to avert it. Worse than that, she's escalating the crisis. She's knows she shouldn't, but the agent still drops her head onto Maggie's shoulder and links their arms as the service begins. It's going to bite her in the ass someday soon but if she doesn't have Kara then she at least needs this. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back at uni now so I'm going to be run off my feet busy and my posting frequency is definitely going to drop but, if you stick around, I promise I have *plans* for this story. We're not just slogging through angst for the sake of angst. There is a point to all of this and we are getting there!
> 
> Also, side-note, St. Matthew-in-the-city is actually a real, albeit, Anglican church. They're known for their witty billboards, including a number of pro-gay ones that caused such a stir. They're great.


	7. Fleeing and feline encounters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wasn't going to update this at all until my holidays in two weeks but idk, I've impulsively decided to throw this up because a certain cow enabled me. 
> 
> It's just little, and I'm not thrilled with it, but it's something. I've got another 20K or so words written, but it's all in bits and pieces. As soon as my exams are done I'll arrange into into a more cohesive narrative and update more than once in 3 months.

_He's ashamed to admit that he doesn't do it for Lena. He tells himself that it's for Kara but... that's not true either. Honestly? He does it for himself._

_He does it because he misses his best friend. He does it because he needs her back. Because they all need her back. Because she left. Because Kara up and left, and none of them have functioned properly ever since._

* * *

They're at Maggie's bar. Or rather, most of them are at Maggie's bar. Because Lena's too busy chilling 5 (and a half) feet under to attend her own post-funeral drinks and, as soon as the gravedigger lay down her shovel, Kara melted away into the city streets like a ghost who was never truly there in the first place. And, actually, Sam isn't with them either because she has a devastated teenage daughter who shouldn't be patronising a bar under any circumstances, let alone these ones. So maybe, literally speaking, only half of them are at Maggie's bar but Alex has too many tumblers of liquor pickling in her gut to care about those kind of details.

The agent is absentmindedly tiptoeing her fingers around the edge of her glass while Winn and Maggie joust about the relative merits of freemium games in the background when a voice rings out -

"Alice!"

\- loud and authoritative and distantly familiar in a way that sends recognition flirting around the edges of her awareness, just out of reach. Briefly, she considers chasing it around inside her skull until it crystallises into something firm and understandable. But, because she's just buried part of her chosen family, Alex can't actually be fucked pursuing the memory of a woman who's calling a name that means nothing to her. Instead, she lets the moment drift away and her attention slowly shifts to the beads of condensation sliding down James' beer bottle.

But then that voice is back, and closer, rudely jolting Alex out of a rare moment of pleasant numbness.

"Alice Danvers."

The unexpected utterance of her own last name is startling enough that Alex awkwardly jerks upright and swings her gaze wildly around the room in search of the sound's source. But it's hard to concentrate when the sudden movement sets off a spin cycle of nausea high in her stomach and her head swims until her vision is so blurred that her surroundings look like a Jackson Pollock painting.

"I know that's you," the voice says from somewhere to Alex's right, dripping with impatience and disdain. In response, Alex's neck rotates 120 degrees and, as she goes, a small, blonde outline begins to materialise out of the mess of colours and shapes in the room.

"Oh yeah?" Maggie interjects caustically because, unlike her former fiancee and current tragedy-fuck buddy, the detective isn't struggling to wrap a wasted brain around the situation. "Then you should know her name is Alex."

Winn releases a frightened squeak as the mystery woman clicks her tongue disapprovingly and the small, blonde outline begins to solidify into something recognisably human before Alex's very eyes just in time for the agent to watch the figure flick her hand like she couldn't possibly care less. And suddenly, between Alex's newfound clarity of sight and the woman's unmistakable face, all the pieces snick into place in Alex's mind with all the subtly of a flash-bang grenade.

 _Cat Grant_. Former media mogul mastermind (Queen of All Media, Kara said she'd crowned herself). Current Presidential Press Secretary extraordinaire. Also, renowned bitch.

"Where's Kara?" Cat demands, living up to her reputation as she spares not a second for her somewhat incredulous ex-employees at the table, and Alex's companions are visibly stricken by the absurdity of Cat's presence as she crabbily drops a hand onto her hip and cocks her pelvis to the side.

[Because it's one thing for Cat _freaking_ Grant to enter such an establishment when it's the ops-base for an underground effort to save Earth from a Daxamite invasion, and quite another for her to willingly step inside an active alien drinking den in the middle of happy hour.]

Alex's thoughts, however, are stuck on an entirely different carousel - twirling round and round and round until she's almost dizzy from the repetition.

_Like I'd know._

Alex reaches forward to grasp her drink with unsteady fingers, knocking down an undignified gulp of scotch to singe away the memory of Kara's cold shoulder. And then she throws back a second to drown her recollection of the way Kara breezed past her without the tiniest hint of acknowledgement when the Kryptonian swept out of the church and disappeared, alone, into the lead car of the funeral procession. The third, meanwhile, is to dull the rejection that still stings so sharply in the raw, oozing cracks of Alex's fractured heart.

The agent's glass finally lands back on the tabletop with a loud thunk, liquid sloshing up the sides, and Cat grills her with an expectant stare but Alex just snorts bitterly.

"You tell me."

"I can't," Cat says, her icy facade crumbling as genuine concern creeps into her tone. "She wasn't at her apartment and she won't return my calls."

"Join the fucking club," Alex scoffs, unmoved by Cat's display of authentic human emotion, and she swirls her tumbler one way, then the other as various nods and murmurs of agreement flicker around the table.

"I have to be wheels up with Air Force One in 90 minutes," Cat snips, tapping her toe against the sticky floor in a staccato rhythm that sets Alex's teeth on edge. "Don't dick me around."

"Sorry, I just really don't know where she is," Alex says dismissively, not sounding sorry at all as she stuffs her hand into the peanut snack bowl and Maggie can't seem to resist adding, "Don't worry, she doesn't do dick."

Cat huffs a short sharp breath out of her nostrils, almost like a very tiny, very angry bull and Winn's chair whines in protest as he tries to scooch away.

"But if you can't find Kara, how did you even find me?" Alex randomly asks through the peanuts cluttering her cheeks, and Maggie grimaces when flying crumbs nearly land in her rum.

"A responsible journalist never reveals her sources," Cat sniffs, straightening her already impeccable posture until she looms over the table like a spectre far larger than her stature should allow. "Not that federal agents tend to have much respect for the pillars of press freedom."

"And you're a responsible journalist?" Alex questions, completely ignoring Cat's snide dig at her profession. The glare that flares out of Cat's eyes would wither most living organisms where they stood, but Alex just finishes off the dregs her scotch, unaffected.

Several long seconds dribble past while Cat's stare lasers into the side of Alex's head with an intensity that almost rivals Kara's literal laser eyes, until Cat finally brings herself to speak, voice dripping with falsely saccharine sweetness as she commands, "When you see your sister, tell her to _call_ me."

And then Cat spins on the heels of her obnoxiously expensive shoes, pausing only to offer a fleeting, no-look, "goodbye Mr Olsen, computer boy," as she clacks towards the exit, patrons parting before her like a sea presented with a true messenger from God.

"Well she's a jackass," Maggie mutters with a shake of her head that sends hair cascading across her face.

"She's not that bad," Winn mumbles as Maggie pushes the offending locks away from her eyes. "Once she even called me Will instead of computer boy."

"Your name isn't Will," Maggie points out, and Winn picks nervously at the label on his cider bottle.

"Yeah, but it's close?"

"Uhhh, near enough ain't good enough. God, man. Grow a spine."

"I have a spine!"

"Sure. One made of jelly, maybe."

It all devolves into bickering from there, and James tries to shoot Alex a look over the top of Maggie's head but the agent has already tuned out, too bogged down in the dank swamp of her own mind to actually pay attention to anything happening around her.

* * *

She can't stay here. That much is apparent from the constant ache beneath her ribs. Kara can't stay here in this city that's so large and so loud, yet so empty all at once. This city that will always be empty because its soul got ripped out and there's no way to put it back. Everywhere she goes is somewhere that will never be the same, and it hurts. Everything hurts.

And because everything hurts, her mind is made up even before the last shovelful of dirt is dumped into Lena's grave. She needs to forget. But she can't forget here.

So she runs. Away. To somewhere warm, and different, and far far away.

Although, technically, she flies.

On an airplane.

Not immediately, although she wants to. Rao, does she want to. She wants to catch a cab from the cemetery straight to the airport and throw herself on the first plane that'll take her, but she doesn't. Because, unfortunately, heartbreak doesn't change the fact that she's an adult and, as an adult, she has obligations.

Obligations like officially resigning from the job she has no intention of doing. Like paying up her lease and clearing out the loft she isn't going to live in. Like hiring a financial manager so her newfound fortune won't stagnate under her inattention.

[Ever since Laurel Chen finally tracked her down, Kara's been in shock. Becoming an overnight billionaire isn't easy to process even in the best of circumstances, and this is the _worst_ of circumstances. She's not sure she's ever going to process it.]

And she has to arrange a visa. Because travelling human-style comes with illogical and annoying quirks like border control, but Kara won't even consider flying herself halfway across the Western Hemisphere. It's not that she can't, but she won't. She doesn't do that anymore. She doesn't do any of it anymore.

Just thinking of Supergirl is enough to make Kara's lip curl in disgust. And when she discovers a spare supersuit as she packs away her apartment, she has to grit her teeth to resist the urge to rip it in half. Instead, she unceremoniously dumps it in the bottom of a box and smothers it under a pile of cardigans so she doesn't have to look at it for a second longer than necessary. So she doesn't have to think about everything it represents. All the failures it represents. All _her_ failures.

/

It's January 8th when she tucks her passport into her bag before she pulls her loft door shut one last time, and she knows that her friends and family at least deserve a goodbye. But... she doesn't even give them that. Not really. She just flicks Alex a text and boards the plane without a backwards glance.

In a way it's another failure but, at this point, what's one more moment of inadequacy?

* * *

Alex is curled around a deeply sleeping Maggie Sawyer when her phone beeps. Her eyes fly open at the sound and she flings an arm behind her, feeling around for her phone on the bedside table until she remembers it's still in her pants.

She groans, internally cursing her lack of forethought as she delicately unwinds her legs from between Maggie's and tugs her arm out from beneath the detective's neck to extricate herself from their spooning situation.

[Their spooning situation which - for something she's supposed to be avoiding - is occurring with problematically increasing regularity.]

The detective is so dead to the world that she doesn't seem to notice Alex's absence as the agent stumbles out of bed and across the room, ferreting around in search of her jeans. Alex doesn't find them near the door like she expects, but instead discovers the end of one leg poking out from beneath the armchair in the corner.

She feels her way, hand over hand, up the material until she finds the back pockets and fumbles with tired fingers to force her mobile out into her clammy palm. The light from the screen pierces her brain as soon as she clicks it on and the agent slams her eyes shut against the stabbing headache that corkscrews through her temple - an unfortunate side effect of bathing her liver in ethanol until she achieves blissful inebriated ignorance.

It takes a decent chunk of her courage to eventually crack an eye open and squint at the message notification. But when she sees Kara's name splayed across her screen for the first time in weeks, hope balloons in her chest and presses tightly up against her breastbone.

Until she actually swipes the text open, and that balloon pops violently.

 _6:04 am_  
**Kara:** I'm going away for a bit. I love you.

"Wha- the fuck?!"

Alex's exclamation is supposed to be hushed but, in reality, it's more of a hoarse shout and it's loud enough that Maggie grunts grumpily and rolls over. Alex freezes at the movement and stays stationary until Maggie's breathing evens out. It's only once she's certain the detective is back to sleep that she flicks her phone back on and winces through the pain to tap out a reply.

 _6:14 am_  
**Alex:** Love you too  
**Alex:** But

 _6:16 am_  
**Alex:** Going where? How long for?

/

[By day ten without a reply, any last scrap of expectation Alex might still harbour will finally slip from her grasp and melt into the ether. And yet, as the days merge into weeks, she'll spend many lonely nights on her couch with a drink (or four, or seven) cradled her hands, staring at her phone on the coffee table, willing it to ding.]

* * *

It's twenty hours and two stopovers later when Kara finally touches down in Cordoba. Unsurprisingly, all the memories she's desperate to leave behind haven't been magically erased, but Argentina is warm enough, different enough and far far away enough that traces of Lena don't linger everywhere she looks.

It's better than nothing.


	8. Neighbours and nightmares

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So like, just warning you, this isn't very good. It's in desperate need of a major edit that I'm too lazy to give it because my desire to post it and move on to the next chapter is greater than my desire to make it decent.
> 
> I was going to skip over this part of the timeline entirely, but it's important for contextual purposes so I've put it in there. Apologies if it's boring and apologies for any egregious errors I've missed because it's 12:30 am

_He may not be doing it for Lena, but he couldn't do it without her. Or a_ _t least, he couldn't do it without the temporal quantum entanglement notes she left him_.

* * *

The heat hits the instant Kara exits Cordoba’s climate-controlled airport, a warm humidity already brewing in the air at 8 am, and she allows herself a moment to soak in it, a modicum of tension easing from her shoulders. She may not have a plan or even a place to stay but her surroundings are comfortably unfamiliar and, without the claustrophobic memories of National City and her apartment crushing her lungs in a vice-like grip, she breathes easier than she has in weeks.

But, even if she wanted to, she can’t just stand on the sizzling pavement outside the arrivals hall forever, watching vehicles and travellers bustle by. So she hikes her backpack - which now contains the entirety of her belongings - higher onto her shoulders and steps towards what she correctly assumes is a taxi stand.

She pulls the back door of a traditionally yellow cab open and, before she slides into the seat, she throws her bag in first with complete disregard for the delicate electronics in the front pocket. Because really, what does it matter if she smashes her laptop? She could buy another ten without putting the tiniest dent in her new bank balance.

[Her _blood money_ bank balance, but she’s trying not to think about that because she doesn’t want her attempt at a fresh start to begin with a semi-public sob-athon.]

Her driver is an older man, bearded and soft around the edges and, when he speaks, Kara has to cast back to that one year of Spanish she took in high school. And it turns out that, despite the fact she’d been too 15 and angry to ever pay proper attention in that class, she can still dredge up a convincing enough approximation of the language to ask for a hotel recommendation and a ride into the city.

The 6-mile journey is complicated by spots of snarling traffic but Kara finds that she doesn’t mind, content to simply gaze out the window and absorb new sights as foreign pop drifts quietly from the radio. But then, almost too soon, they pull up at her destination and Kara is yanked from her moment of peaceful solitude.

She sighs as the driver calls out her fare and then digs into her bag to retrieve a stack of freshly converted Argentine pesos that she’s sure he needs more than she does. When she presses them into his hands he tries to insist that she’s overpaying but she just waves his concerns away and flops out of the car, dragging her backpack behind her.

Kara knocks the cab door shut with her foot, the clunk of its closing cutting off her driver’s disbelieving appreciation, and the momentum from the movement sends her stumbling slightly before she fumbles to a stop on the sidewalk. As she regathers her feet and sense of balance she glances up at the building above her that towers with an eclectic mix of traditional architecture and expansive glass, and she pauses in its shadow, a boulder in the stream of people flowing along the footpath.

It’s only when a passing businessman accidentally crashes into her elbow that’s she’s prompted to weave through the obstacle course of pedestrians that stands between her and her hotel. She reaches and navigates the revolving doors with only minor difficulty but the instant she enters the lobby she’s clobbered with a blast of chilled air that ignites a flare of anxiety beneath her sternum and triggers an eruption of goosebumps across her arms that, given her Kryptonian constitution, aren’t from the cold itself.

A bracing breath sucks involuntarily into her lungs as an unwelcome flood of images - a flood of bullets and burning and death (so much _death_ ) - tries to overtake her and she has to grit her teeth against their ferocity to force herself over to the front desk. Her request is simple but it’s hard to concentrate on what she needs to say when she’s fighting her own mind to keep her head above past waters lest she drown in them, and a judgemental look pastes across the receptionist’s face as Kara struggles.

It probably doesn’t help that Kara is dishevelled after spending most a day hurtling through the atmosphere in a glorified metal can and she’s trying to book off-the-street in an establishment which considers itself too high class for that sort of nonsense. But Kara’s willingness and ability to pay for a two week stay upfront and in full is enough to surmount the receptionist’s scepticism and she quickly gains possession of a keycard to a room that is far less modest than she would prefer.

[Kara strongly suspects she’s being conned when it’s claimed that the sprawling suite on the second from top floor is the only space available, but she can’t bring herself to care.]

She stuffs the card into the front pocket of her jeans (a clothing choice she quickly realised was a mistake after an hour on her first flight) and breezes past a bellhop on the short walk to the elevators, shaking her head at his unnecessary offer to carry her bag. A lift dings open in short order and Kara has to bash the button twice to get the number to light up. But then the ascent begins and she passes the ride intently counting the seconds between floors to ward off her subconscious determination to fixate on unbidden memories.

The walk down the opulent hallway towards her new temporary home, meanwhile, is spent studiously counting her steps in sets of four in an attempt to maintain some semblance of sanity. It works, mostly, and Kara makes it to her room relatively unscathed. She swipes her way through the door and drops her backpack just inside the threshold before she bypasses all the crisp, white decor to locate the thermostat on the back wall. Popping the panel open reveals an overly complicated set of controls but, after a minute of tinkering, she’s able to twiddle the settings up to the high-seventies.

She tells herself that she’s being environmentally friendly - that she’s preventing the frivolous power use involved in excessively air conditioning a room - but the lie seems thin, even to her. Especially given that she then immediately peels off her clothes and clambers into the spacious, light blue tiled shower with the water temperature and pressure both cranked up to high, with no regard for energy or water consumption. Because there’s a certain grime that comes with human-style air travel and Kara is keen to scrub it from her skin.

It’s only once she traipses out of the bathroom, towelling her hair dry as she goes, that she truly takes in the grandness of her suite. A wall of windows offers a sweeping view of the city to the east and there’s an enormous TV screen situated opposite a king sized bed that calls Kara’s name with a song more alluring than that of any siren.

It’s a call she’s helpless to resist and Kara wastes no time in tugging a pair of sweatpants up her legs and pulling Lena’s ratty old MIT sweater over her head. She’d found it amongst her clothes rack when she was emptying her apartment, leftover from when Lena had left it at a games night and Kara had hung it up with an intention to return it that she never followed through on. And when she discovered it, Kara couldn’t bear to look at it but she couldn’t bear to pack it away into storage either, as if that would mean packing Lena away to be forgotten about along with an excess of cardigans and knicknacks. So she brought it with her, and now she doesn’t want to wear anything else because tucking herself into Lena’s jumper feels like the closest Kara is ever going to get to one more of Lena’s hugs; one of the hugs that always felt safe, and loving, and a little bit like home.

But Kara’s trying not to think about how much she misses that - or how much she misses everything about Lena - because that’s just too big and too much and she didn’t fly halfway across the Americas to keeping crying for five hours a day. So she busies herself with removing the mountain of throw pillows from atop the bedcovers and she appreciates a nice decorative cushion as much as the next person but, she thinks as they form a mound on the floor, there is such a thing as too many. But then it doesn’t matter because Kara is slipping beneath the blankets and sighing with something that mirrors a sad sort of contentedness as she sinks into the soft mattress. Because she may have slept for most of her flights but she’s still so burnt out from the productivity required to get her here that she’s desperate for a rest, even though it’s only 10 am.

But before she can truly settle in, Lena’s voice meanders through Kara’s mind and her heart seizes in her chest.

_It’s a good thing you’re Kryptonian. Or else this bed would be terrible for your spinal alignment._

And Kara knows she’s just imagining it.

Just imagining her.

She _knows_ that.

But knowing that doesn’t stop her from whipping her glasses off her face to frantically x-ray every inch of the room in the hopes of discovering Lena lurking somewhere, more snarky commentary poised at the tip of her tongue.

She doesn’t find Lena. Obviously. But she does accidentally look through one wall too many and catch sight of the couple next door engaging in such acrobatic… activity… that Kara is simultaneously icked out and worried they’re going to break something - either the furniture or themselves or, more probably, both.

And the noises that accompany the scandalously raunchy romp are so graphic that they border on disturbing and once Kara has tuned into them, she can’t tune out again for the life of her. So, with her face twisted in distaste, she jams her glasses back on her nose and stretches for the remote on the bedside table because she needs something - _anything_ \- to cleanse her mind of the phrase _oh_ _yeah, uh huh, uh huh, that’s right cowboy, ride me like a fucking pony_ , and pouring undiluted bleach straight into her ears isn’t currently an option.

But at least in a hotel with the kind of 500-channel cable package she never could’ve afforded (nor did she need) back in National City, she’s spoiled for distracting TV choice. If anything, it’s almost easy to immerse herself in scripted drama until her problems (and her memories of her neighbour’s naked shenanigans) are relegated from her thoughts as hours sneak past in blur of secrecy, infidelity and betrayal.

//

It’s after 2 pm when Kara’s stomach unleashes an apoplectic growl that vibrates through her entire abdomen. Because she hasn’t eaten since that morning, when a simulacrum of porridge failed to pass as a poor imitation of breakfast on the plane, and her body is finally rebelling against her neglect, throwing her digestive tract into revolt.

Thank Rao for room service.

It feels like an age before a merciful knock sounds at the door but, when it finally does, Kara hurls herself out of bed with such haste that she sends the duvet sprawling across the carpet. She’s so overcome with hunger that she has to remind herself not to accidentally rip the frame out of the wall in her eagerness to fling the door open.

On the threshold is a trolley, creaking under the weight of three-quarters of the menu, and Kara’s salivary glands kick into hyperdrive as it’s precariously wheeled inside. She’s so caught up in her gastronomic anticipation that she doesn’t notice the perplexed looked shared between the delivery guys when they realise that this is all for her single, somewhat insubstantial self rather than for an army of hulking gym-bunnies.

[But she must quickly become notorious in the kitchens because the confusion ceases sometime around the third day, no matter who is running delivery.]

As soon as she’s alone, Kara starts shovelling, funnelling food down her gullet with gusto, as though enough pasta and barbequed meats might start to fill the hole that gapes open in her heart once they’ve finished filling the hole in her stomach.

It’s only once she’s ready for dessert that she slows down, easing back into bed to savour her sweet treats along with a rerun of La Patrona.

//

It’s a routine that works for her; drowning herself in food and fiction until the small hours of the morning when she inevitably passes out, too exhausted to dream.

And it’s a routine she repeats, day after day, for more than two weeks before everything falls apart.

//

It’s late on her second day in Argentina when Kara finally spots the minibar sequestered away in a corner of her suite and she’s not sure why she didn’t see it before (except perhaps for willful blindness) but, regardless, she makes a mental note to never open it. Not when it’s bound to be full of those little spirit bottles that Alex claims she hates because they’re stupid and impractical - _Who only needs 1.5 oz of gin? Fucking nobody, that’s who_ \- but that Kara knows she secretly thinks are adorable.

Normally Kara would find that reminder of her sister endearing, but right now it just hurts because it just makes her think of Alex. And thinking of Alex is always the first step down a path that leads to thoughts of Kenny and Lena and Krypton; thoughts of friends and family and death.

[Death.

So much _death_.]

And it’s that path that often culminates in what would clinically be considered panic attacks, with an added Kryptonian bonus where she struggles to hold control over her powers. Which explains why she left a crack in the edge of her old loft’s bathroom sink and had to paint over scorch marks around the apartment with an off-white colour that she hopes the bond inspector won’t notice doesn’t quite match the cream of walls.

So she needs to not think about Alex. Which means she needs to not open the minibar, and it means she need to avoid Alex’s many attempts to contact her. And she knows it’s not fair, she knows it’s maybe even cruel, but she just can’t. Not yet.

[And, she worries, maybe not ever.]

So she doesn’t. Open the minibar or any of Alex’s emails or texts or snaps or facebook messages, and she doesn’t answer any of Alex’s calls or listen to any of her voicemails either. Even though they all light up her phone with predictable regularity once Kara takes it out of airplane mode to download Duolingo in the depths of night five.

[Because her constant diet of telenovelas and Spanish-dubbed soaps has been helping to refine her grasp of the language but it’s probably not sufficient practice if she ever plans to go outside and hold a functional conversation.]

Nor does she reply to Eliza or Winn or James or Cat or J’onn or Sam, despite their varied and individual attempts to reach out, because they’re all only a degree removed from Lena and Alex and National City, and that’s a closer association than Kara can handle.

The only exception is Ruby. Because it’s one thing to ignore grown adults and quite another to ignore a kid who had already experienced too much loss and rejection and abandonment even before Lena died and Kara left her without saying goodbye. The same kid who keeps sending cute updates about her life just like she did before everything went to hell, providing Kara with a fleeting sense of normality whenever they ping through.

And Kara isn’t very good at replying, she never manages much more than a brief _good luck with that test today_ , _you’re going to be awesome_ or a _wow, that sounds busy_ but she just has to hope it’s enough for Ruby to know she cares.

* * *

Yuri Doroshenko is a proud man. A proud man who does a good job. Which is why, when he steps into apartment 4C on a sunny Tuesday afternoon to complete his inspection, he notices every out of place speck and every hint of damage in the loft formerly inhabited by one - he checks his form - Kara Danvers; from the burns on the walls painted over in a colour that’s so flagrantly wrong it’s almost offensive, to the hideous damage in the bathroom, to the scrap of paper lying abandoned in the kitchen.

Thorough as he is, he picks the scrap up to ensure it’s nothing important and, as he reads the neatly scrawled note, he just hopes Miss Danvers had rung Laurel Chen as instructed because she certainly won’t be getting her security deposit back.

* * *

The dim light of an early morning in late January is starting to illuminate her surroundings when Kara awakens with a start, eyes flashing open as the first hints of dawn filter through the curtains. Her brain is befuddled by its unexpected alertness and she blinks slowly at the ceiling as it tries to acclimatise, the possibility of more sleep already sadly beyond her reach.

But her body is still heavy with tiredness, too heavy to move, and Kara ends up examining the intricate embossed detailing on the ceiling above her head, tracing the patterns with her eyes to keep her mind occupied. Because left to their own devices her thoughts still have a tendency to torment her, and she’s not ready for that before 6:30 am.

It could be seconds or minutes that pass that way, but it doesn’t really matter because then a timid voice cuts through the still air to pierce Kara’s consciousness--

“Supergirl.”

-and in her shock she literally flies out of bed, fists instinctively locked into a defensive position, halting just before she headbutts a hole in what is undoubtedly expensive art.

“Supergirl,” the voice repeats and Kara’s neck nearly snaps with how quickly she twists her head trying to locate where it’s coming from.

“Kara, you’re Supergirl,” it states, almost in awe, and she finally hones in on it, a form in a shadowy corner of the suite not yet lit by the nascent sun. It’s outline is familiar which is enough for Kara to decide it’s not a threat even though it’s too fuzzy around the edges to properly identify, and she lets herself drop to the floor, landing on the carpet with a graceless but muffled thud.

“So why didn’t you save me?”

The tone of the question is soft, more curious than accusatory, and somehow that makes it worse when the figure moves slightly and Kara finds herself staring right at Kenny Li, his young face soaked in an aged sadness.

A cloying range of feelings clog her throat and when she tries to plead that she’s sorry, she can only croak as the words fail to squeeze past the emotional blockage lodged between her vocal cords.

He just looks at her, mouth pressed into a thin, disappointed line and she takes a desperate step forward from her spot near the bed, as if she could make him understand through proximity.

“I didn’t know,” she manages to say. “I didn’t know. If I’d known-”

“You knew Krypton was going to explode,” a second, hauntingly memorable voice says from behind her and Kara spins around so rapidly in response that she nearly burns a hole in the floor.

“You knew Krypton was going to explode,” Thara repeats, her statement dripping with barely concealed contempt that makes Kara’s heart judder harder and harder with each thunderous pulse until she fears it might rip itself free from her ribcage, “but you got in that pod anyway and left the rest of us to burn.”

Every word that flows from Thara’s mouth gouges bloody tracks through the guilt that lingers in every inch of Kara’s frame, burrowing through flesh and muscle to bury themselves in her bones, where she’ll carry each one for the rest of her days. Because Kara’s childhood best friend hasn’t changed, even after more than a quarter-century in Rao’s light, and her adolescent observations are as biting and accurate as ever.

“I didn’t- I didn’t ask to be saved,” Kara tries to explain, stumbling over herself as the threat of tears burns in her nasal passages. “But I- I had to protect Kal. They said I- I had to protect Kal.”

“Oh yes. Them. Your parents. The architects of Krypton’s destruction,” Thara agrees derisively. “Of course the spawn of the guilty would be spared. The House of El, selfish until the end.”

And despite everything Kara has learned about her parents and their shortcomings over the years, her daughterly defensive instinct still rears its head at the allegation. But, before she can argue that they do not bear the burden of Krypton’s death alone, Thara digs into the core of Kara’s being and drives her point home with ruthless abandon.

“Do you know what it’s like, Kara? To see and hear and smell everyone you care about go up in flames, consumed one by one by the fiery end of your world? And do you know what it’s like to smell your own singed flesh even once you’re so burnt you can’t feel the pain anymore? Do you, Kara? Do you? Because I do and let me tell you, it’s the smell that’s the worst.”

Kara wants to answer, she wants to cry that she’s sorry and if she could change it all, she _would_. But her tongue is too thick in her mouth and it won’t curl to form intelligible syllables. So instead she’s stuck, trapped, as Thara sneers and shakes her head.

“What about getting run through with a Kryptonite sword?” a third voice asks, another figure materialising to Thara’s left. “Do you know what that’s like?”

“Aunt Astra…”

“Oh, so you do remember me. How comforting,” Astra says, sarcasm rolling off her in waves. “That makes me feel so much better about being slaughter by that redhead you replaced your family with when you forgot about us.”

‘I didn’t- I never- I didn’t-” Kara stutters.

“What about me?” Kenny asks from the other side of the room. “Did you forget about me?”

“No!” Kara protests, wheeling around to face him. “I couldn’t forget about you. I-”

“What about me?” asks a newcomer with an achingly familiar hint of an accent, melting through the wall at Kara’s side. “Do you even miss me? Or are you just happy to move on with my money? After all, isn’t a dead Luthor the best Luthor?”

“No!” Kara shouts, clamping her hands over her ears. “No! No! That’s not true!”

“Isn’t it?” Lena inquires, sharp and sceptical. “Because from what I can see-”

A choked gurgled spills from Lena's lips, swallowing the end of her sentence in a spurt of blood that springs forth from a fresh wound torn in her neck. Lena’s eyes widen with panic and her hands scrabble at her throat in an attempt to stem the gushing arterial flow that’s already soaked the top of her shirt and splattered across the ivory coloured carpet, but it's fruitless.

And every fibre in Kara’s body howls at her to _move_ but, no matter what she tries, her limbs won’t co-operate. She’s helpless, trapped and transfixed, unable to look away and unable to offer any assistance, even when Lena gags out a noise that sounds painfully close to a broken _Kara, help me_.

A Kryptonite dagger to the gut might have hurt less, but Kara doesn’t get an opportunity to dwell because a quiet _oh_ sounds and she rotates to find Kenny clutching at his chest, blood leaking between his fingers and dripping onto his shoes. From there it doesn’t take long before his strength gives out and he falls to his knees, despondent resignation etched across his features.

And Kara wants to fight whatever force has her feet glued to the floor. She wants that with everything she’s got. But, before she can even try to make any progress, a hair-raising shriek is released behind her and she rotates further, almost against her will, just in time to see Astra collapse, her veins lit up with an unmistakable radioactive green.

An urge to run to her, to do something - to do anything - twitches in Kara’s muscles, but she can’t. Because she’s still held in place, rooted to the spot by some cruel kind of paralysis that leaves her a spectator to the perverse tableau of suffering playing out in front of her. And it only gets worse because then Thara suddenly ignites, disappearing in a blaze before she can even scream and the flames from her immolation skitter across the ground until they catch on the hem of Kara’s pants.

Kara does scream, a harsh sound that she feels grating in her throat more than she feels it ringing in her ears as she watches fire lick up her legs, morbidly enraptured by the way her pyjamas melt into rapidly blackening and bloodied flesh. The flames spread eagerly, engulfing most of Kara’s frame in less than a minute, and it’s hard to think past the blistering pain but she still notices that burning to death almost feels like Kryptonite poisoning from the outside in.

It’s less than another minute before the Kryptonian candle that is Kara Zor-El can no longer remain vertical. The last thing she sees before her head cracks sickeningly against the ground and everything goes dark is the remnants of Thara’s face, heat-withered eyes little more than husks in their sockets, hints of skull peeking through the musculature that’s exposed beneath seared skin.

//

Bang.  
Bang.  
Bang.

It’s funny how, even though Kara should be dead, carried to Rao on wings of cleansing fire, she can still hear the crackling cacophony that accompanies a severe building blaze.

**Bang.  
Bang.  
Bang.**

And it’s almost annoying, because sometimes a woman just wants to die in undisturbed peace.

 **BANG.  
BANG.**  
**BANG.**

But then Kara’s eyes fly open, for real this time, yanked from sleep by an incessant pounding on her door. Confusion permeates her whole system as she peers through the darkness at familiar patterns on the ceiling, heart thudding unevenly in her chest, sweaty limbs tangled in the sheets and she tries to orient herself to reality but it’s hard. It’s hard when a throbbing headache is forming low in the base of her skull and it’s hard when the images of her nightmare are branded onto the backs of her eyelids, flashing through her vision every time she blinks.

It’s the insistent banging that drives Kara to her feet, desperate to stop the noise that lances bolts of pain through her brain with every collision between fist and wood. Because it turns out, under enough pressure, not even Kryptonians are immune to stress migraines.

Her feet are still tangled in bedding as she starts to walk and she trips, only remembering she can hover just before her nose smashes into the carpet that she can still see sprinkled with Lena’s blood and smouldering under Thara’s scorched corpse. She clings to the room’s bespoke footlocker as she rights herself, trying to let the memories flow in one side of her mind and out the other, taking a moment and a few controlled breathes to ground herself in the present.

When she’s as ready as she’s ever going to be, she staggers over to the door and twists the handle with one hand while the other reaches out to slap the lightswitch. The bulbs flicker once before they flare to life and Kara slams both palms into her forehead with enough force to shatter human bone because the brightness triggers a vindictive agony behind her sinuses. She hunches over her knees, head in her hands, elbows digging into her thighs as a diminutive middle-aged man with an air of supreme self-importance and an impeccably tailored suit nudges the door fully open. Then he promptly starts nattering at her in Spanish so rapid-fire that Kara isn’t sure she’d be able to understand it even with all her faculties intact.

His disregard for her obvious discomfort doesn’t help her to communicate through her substantial impairment either, but finally she manages to make him listen to one of her mumbled _no hablo Español_ s and he makes an accurate assumption, immediately switching to equally rapid-fire English that she is only slightly more capable of deciphering.

“We have received a noise complaint about this room, and I am serving you notice to cease and desist or you will be in violation of our terms and conditions and you will be asked to leave."

“A… noise complaint?”

The man reaches into his inner jacket pocket, removing a folded square of paper and crisply unfolding it before he shakes the page out and clears his throat.

“Repeated incidents of shouting and screaming,” he reads, before glancing up from the form to stare down his nose at her. Or rather, to stare up his nose at her because she has at least half a foot of height on him.

“Oh,” Kara says, and it does little to mollify the little man’s displeasure if the way he purses his lips is anything to go by.

“This is not the behaviour we expect from our guests,” he tuts, craning his neck and puffing out his chest as he meticulously tucks his paper back into his pocket.

“Sorry,” Kara offers, frowning as she struggles to think past the pulsating pressure inside her skull. “I-it must have been… my m-m-movie?”

It’s a questionable excuse but he seems to buy it, deflating back to his original size as his face adopts an exasperated yet gentler expression.

“I do not understand you young people,” he says, smoothing a hand down his greying sideburns. “My children are the same. Always putting the shows and the music on too loud. And I tell them! I tell them they will regret it when they are 35 and deaf. But do they listen to me? No. Never.”

“Oh, um,” Kara starts, thrown by the abrupt change of tack. “I- I’ll listen to you, sir?”

She doesn’t expect him to beam but he does, a proud smile colonising half his face as he self-satisfiedly straightens his lapels.

“Good,” he then announces, neatly joining his hands behind his back. “So no more trouble from this room?”

“No more trouble from this room,” Kara agrees, making a promise she’s not sure she can keep, but the hotel manager believes her and nods once before he turns to preen off down the hallway.

Kara, for her part, is left confused and overwhelmed in his wake, slipping back into the lost liminal space between now and then where she’s barely aware of her own actions. But she must close the door because she winds up with her back pressed against it, staring unseeingly at the abstract painting on the opposite wall as the pain in her head thrums in steady concert with a pain in her heart.

She couldn’t tell you how long she stands like that, frozen and fragmented, flitting between the real world and her multitude of malignant memories but, by the time she returns to herself, sunlight is streaming through the windows to render the overhead bulbs redundant. When she leans across to switch them off it feels like an achievement but it also draws her attention to the prickling discomfort that’s rising beneath her skin to replace her receding headache, filling her with the kind of vibrating energy that makes her want to run or scream or hit something.

She tries to breathe through it; in through the nose, hold for five, out through the mouth, hold for five and repeat, just like Alex taught her back when she used to wake screaming in their shared teenage bedroom from nightmares about Krypton.

["I know it sounds dumb," she had said, taking Kara's shaking hands in her own, "But they showed it to us in this stupid exam stress management seminar at school and, don't tell anyone I said this, but it does kinda help."]

But it barely takes the edge off and, before Kara really knows what she’s doing, she’s yanking on appropriate-for-public clothes for the first time in 17 days and bolting from her room with little more than her wallet stuffed in her back pocket.

//

Being outside helps somewhat and Kara’s not sure if it’s thanks to the fresh air she hadn’t realised she’d missed or the distracting buzz of a city just entering morning rush hour but either way it’s a relief. She lets her feet take her in whatever direction they please, wandering aimlessly through street after street until the smell of fresh baking hits her nostrils, drawing her to a hole-in-the-wall cafe.

There is a delectable range of gluten-filled goodness on display and the woman behind the counter laughs when Kara orders half a cabinet, assuming it’s a joke. But Kara would never joke about a subject as serious as food and she polishes off eight pastries in approximately four seconds flat, much to her server’s astonishment.

She doesn’t linger when she’s finished. She just hands over a more than generous tip along with her bill and steps outside to resume her undirected perambulation. Left, right, left, left, right she goes, passing by stony colonial architecture that hold its own violent history but at least bears no resemblance to anything Kara would’ve seen in Argo or National Cities, until she lands on the perimeter of Plaza San Martin. And it’s then that she remembers the urgings of Maria, her gregarious hotel housekeeper, who insisted she must take a trip to the Cathedral before she left.

And it’s stupid, Kara thinks afterwards, because she should expect this.

But she doesn’t.

Instead, she walks naively across the square towards the old, large Roman Catholic church that has little in common with the modern Episcopalian space in which Lena’s funeral service was held, expecting to appreciate the eccentric blend of styles that forms when a building is constructed across a century and a half.

As she passes under the entrance arch and through the cavernous doors, her head tilts up, eyes drawn to the intricate carvings that decorate the ceiling. But as she makes her way further inside, her gaze drops down to the altar and it’s almost like she gets physically slapped by the weight of loss that hits her all over again.

And she does try to remind herself that this isn’t the funeral and Lena isn’t up there in a box, but it’s hard when her mind is convinced she could reach out and touch her if only she walked 30 feet forwards. And she tries to calm her ragged breathing, but its hard when the crows of grief settle on her shoulders and lean forward to peck at the spaces between her ribs until they can pry into her chest cavity and extract her heart, piece by piece - leaving each one scattered across the Cathedral floor, ripe for trampling.

She’s only tugged back to reality when a loud series of cracks resound within the nave because the pew Kara didn’t even realise she was clutching has splintered under her fingers, leaving a fist-shaped hole in the back of the bench where her handful of wooden mulch used to reside. The sound is startling and Kara jumps, her fist unclenching to dump a pile of sawdust on the stone floor that she stares at once it lands.

And then she stares at her hand.

And then she stares at the pew.

And then she turns tail and runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm aiming to push out at least another two chapters, preferably three before my holidays end and all hopes of a posting schedule are shot to hell, but I know better than to make any promises. But comments feed the writing beast so if you want to get to the fluff sooner... you know what to do


	9. There's something visceral about violence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was thinking last night about how I feel about this chapter and ended up with a very elaborate metaphor involving an undercooked cake. So, you know, expect some bits that needed longer in the creative oven to be perfect but it is what it is
> 
> And, as the title suggests, I should probably clarify there is a specific CW for violence in this chapter

_J’onn turns a blind eye to his illicit use of Lab 3. And Alex doesn’t confront him about it either but he’s not sure if that’s because she’s also turning a blind eye, or because she hasn’t been paying enough attention to notice what he’s up to._

* * *

“You know what?” Alex spits. “ _Fuck_ you.” 

And it’s probably rude to swear at somebody’s grave, but she doesn’t give a shit. Not today. Not after the week she’s had. Not when she feels like crap whizzed in a blender and set on fire.

“What were you fucking thinking?”

It’s not that she doesn’t understand, because she does. She’d throw herself in front of a bullet for Kara too. But she’s furious anyway.

“What was the point in saving her if you just fucking took her from me anyway?”

Logically, Alex knows it’s not Lena’s fault; Kara made her own choices. But right now her life is falling to pieces and she’s brimming with a need to lash out.

“This isn’t how anything was supposed to go!”

Her raised voice incites the ire of an older gentleman a few rows ahead and he turns to coat her with a glare that’s probably supposed to make her feel bad, but Alex just scowls remorselessly and resists the urge to flip him off until he finally turns back around.

“You’re Lena Luthor,” the agent continues, albeit at a reduced volume because she doesn’t actually want to enrage the geriatric jerk to the point where he has an aneurysm. “You’re supposed to rule the world… Not _die_.”

She sniffs, her anger starting to subside beneath the grief she tries so hard not to acknowledge.

“And Kara… She’s my sister. And she’s-” Alex glances around furtively, dropping into a surreptitious stage whisper “-Supergirl. She’s not supposed to _leave_.”

But Kara did leave. Kara, Lena, Maggie… they all left, one way or another, and Alex is lost, struggling to stay afloat in a world that doesn’t make sense anymore.

“What the... what the fuck am _I_ supposed to do?” she asks, rocking her weight from one foot to the other as stressed energy twitches in her muscles, eyes roving across the succinct inscription on Lena’s headstone.

_Lena Kieran Luthor_

_1989 - 2016_

That’s it. No _in loving memory of_. No meaningful quote. Just her name, and two dates. Because, for reasons Alex can only speculate about, that’s what Lena had decreed and Jess, ever-loyal, wouldn’t be swayed from her instructions no matter how hard Sam pushed.

“This isn’t fair.”

None of this is fair, and the more Alex thinks about it, the more her earlier anger returns with a vengeance, coiling heavily in pit of her stomach. Which is a familiar feeling because, these days, her most constant companion is the endless reservoir of rage that buzzes beneath her skin, never far from rising to the surface. And rise it does, malignant tendrils snaking out of her gut until they infect every tissue in her body with a cancerous frustration that Alex tries to release by petulantly kicking at the grass beneath her boots.

It doesn’t help much.

“Everything is screwed!” she growls, far louder than she intended, and the fussy old man in his hideous mustard tweed jacket glowers again in her direction. But Alex hardly notices, hands raking roughly through her hair as her breaths start coming short and sharp.

“Everything is screwed and I don’t- I don’t know what to do. I don’t know.”

Except she has to know, because Kara fucked off to god knows where and left Alex to keep it together. To be responsible. To keep the city safe.

“I can’t do this.”

Except it’s all on her now so she doesn’t really have a choice. Not even when her breathing runs ragged, air husking down her windpipe as her ribcage clamps down around her lungs and panic swells in her chest.

“I- I can’t.”

But there is one thing she knows she can do. Because there’s one thing she can always do.

Scotch.

And once the thought enters her mind, she doesn't waste time hanging around. She just says her goodbyes, half contrite and half resentful, and then tromps off down the cemetery’s grassy paths beneath the stormy late-March sky that mirrors her chaotic mood. And as she goes, the desire to bury this disaster of a day under a torrent of Johnnie Walker Red thuds in her veins with each step she takes.

* * *

After the church incident, Kara runs from Cordoba quicker than a commitment-phobe fleeing from a wedding, stopping only to collect her things from her hotel before she hurls herself on the first train that’ll get her the heck out of there. Because the city that once felt like a sanctuary from her past is now swimming in it, and Kara has to escape before she drowns. 

She does better in Rosario, and she’s not sure if that’s because she’s less depressed or just because she goes outside and engages with life more, but it’s true either way.

Which is nice.

But going out also comes with its own unique set of problems because, everywhere she goes, she creates associations that, in the end, will all become too much.

//

By early February, she can’t walk past the little thrift shop near where she’s staying without remembering the sapphire studded necklace that she thinks reminded her of her mother’s eyes.

And, from late February-onwards, whenever she strolls through the Parque de la Independencia, she remembers the busking tango dancers who reminded her of the mirth that lit up Lena’s face on a boozy girls’ night when she drunkenly told the story of hiding behind stacks of chairs to avoid ballroom lessons at private school when she was 13. Because, according to Lena, she was _too punk for that shit_.  

[Lena also said she suspected that was the last thread in the string of misbehaviour that got her banished to boarding school in Ireland, lest she bring the family name into further local disrepute.]

And once March arrives, Kara can't even eat at her favourite cafe anymore because she just remembers the nauseating guilt that roiled in her stomach when a news story about Supergirl’s disappearance flashed across the TV behind the counter; the same nauseating guilt that left her puking into a gutter as she tried to bolt back to her hotel room.

So, eventually, Kara leaves Rosario too; its ability to provide refuge ruined by the memories that stain its scenery.

Which is how she finds herself here, in a dingy Buenos Aires hall, surrounded by old people engaged in a rowdy game of afternoon bingo. Because the conversation she struck up when she was squished beside a lovely grandmother-of-12 on the sweaty Rosario-BA bus ride ended with an invitation, and Kara couldn’t bear to turn the woman down. Not when Sofia looked at her with sweet eyes so wide and welcoming.

But, although she said yes, Kara hadn’t been looking forward to it. Truthfully, most of her has spent the past three days dreading her upcoming appointment with two hours of brain-melting boredom. But, now that she’s here, she’s pleasantly surprised.

In fact, she’s _almost_ having fun.

Especially when Sofia whispers all the bingo club gossip at her in broken English.

“That one,” the portly grandmother hisses, pointing unsubtly at a man with a pretentious combover and luscious sideburns, “and that one-” her pointing shifts to a woman in an eye-wateringly fluorescent floral dress that belies her age, “under there-” she nods towards the top table, “doing the…” Sofia trails off, her gaze wandering as she searches for the right word. 

But she mustn’t find it because then she’s doing this jerky pelvic thrusting that makes the rickety table shake and Kara has to stifle a giggle in the back of her hand. Which is shocking, because she can’t recall the last time she genuinely laughed.

It throws her off kilter and her sense of internal balance is only jolted into further disarray when the get-together ends, elderly filtering out into the muggy evening as the first suggestions of dusk start to flutter across the horizon. Because Sofia pulls Kara into a tight hug before she goes, arms wrapping around Kara’s back, one hand patting the Kryptonian’s shoulder as she squeezes and Kara awkwardly hugs back, her own arms stiff and out of practice. It’s the most physical contact she’s had in more than three months and it lingers disconcertingly on her skin as Sofia pulls away, ruffling Kara’s hair in concert with an exhortation to come again next week.

It continues to linger as Sofia clambers into the back of her daughter’s car with a final goodbye, leaving Kara on the sidewalk knocked all emotionally askew. And it's probably stupid to be so affected by a single, brief hug from an acquaintance, but it's been so long since she felt so cared for - since she let anyone get close enough to care for her (even fleetingly) - that she’s overwhelmed. So overwhelmed, in fact, that she chooses to traverse the eight miles back to her hotel on foot, hoping that the trek might clear her head.

* * *

It's a miracle Alex makes it home in one piece given the way she rides there in a haze, weaving her bike between heavy traffic at inadvisably high speeds that she doesn't slow from even when the darkly brooding skies open to dump cataclysmic rain onto the road surface. She just recklessly disregards the slick asphalt and she throws her Monster into overly-aggressive turns that result in more than one hair-raising skid.

But she does make it home safely despite her objective idiocy, either by the grace of god or pure dumb luck. Not the she cares which as she slams into her living room with enough force to make the front door bounce off the wall. Then, in a manoeuvre that would probably seem ridiculous to an onlooker, she simultaneous kicks the door shut behind her and shucks her sopping leather jacket onto the floor. She should hang it up to dry, but she can't be bothered so she just turns right out of habit instead, expecting to find herself face-to-face with an alcohol-stocked kitchen.

But this isn't her studio. This is her new apartment. The one she rented after Kara left because the old one was overflowing with painful memories of the sister who won't talk to her and the relationship that was meant to be forever, before practical realities got in the way. And in this apartment, turning right at the threshold just points her at the hall that leads to the bathroom. 

Which is not where she wants to go.

But, even if she does get lost trying to find her own liquor cabinet sometimes, it’s a relief to come home to somewhere new. Because, for all the stupid decisions she made during her relapse into Maggie, she was never quite stupid enough to bring her back to this place. So every inch of the space is almost a clean slate, tainted only by reminders of all the nights she’s wasted drinking (and crying) herself into oblivion after pulling 14 hours at the DEO, and all the following mornings she’s woken with a thumping headache pounding in her skull before she quells the hangover with aspirin and a heavy hand of Bailey’s in her coffee.

[That’s not dysfunctional, right?]

But, speaking of her 14-hour workdays, J’onn has decided to insist that it’s a gross contravention of protocol for her put in that much overtime even if it’s unpaid. Something about _exceeded duty time limits_ and _safe agent workloads_. She's not actually sure of the specifics because she wasn't really listening. Once she caught the gist that he was forcing her to take two days off, she didn't feel any need to pay attention to the rest of the speech. Especially since most of it probably came straight from the agency handbook that he made her read so many times when she was recruited that she could probably still recite the whole thing cover to cover.

All 837 pages of it.

And it turns out that today was a _great_ day to be put on mandatory leave, because who doesn't love having their already splintered heart blown into even tinier smithereens when they have nothing to distract them from their misery for another 45 horribly empty hours.  

So maybe that’s why she went to Lena. Maybe that's why she yelled at Lena. Just to give herself something to do. And it's definitely one of the reasons why she makes a beeline for the scotch without even stopping to change her soaking wet pants or remove her drenched boots. Who cares if it’s only two in the afternoon? She’s been dealing with this sober for 189 minutes which, in her current estimation, is approximately 188 minutes too long. 

* * *

It's somewhere around the two mile mark of her walk that the fog-resistant lenses Lena installed in Kara’s glasses begin to lose their battle against the 85 degree air that's dripping with 98% humidity. It starts with a light smattering of condensation that Kara barely notices, but it continues to build as she winds through narrow streets, until she’s squinting through a thick layer of mist that makes it hard to see two feet in front of her.

So she pulls the lead-lined frames off her face and wipes them clean on her shirt without ever breaking her stride, in a process that takes less than thirty seconds. But it's the same thirty seconds in which a petrified squeak is released in an alley three blocks behind her and, as soon as the sound reaches her ears, Kara reacts out of pure instinct.

With no regard for who might see her, she shoves her glasses roughly into her pocket and launches into a full bore sprint that makes her surroundings whip past in a blur until she screeches to a halt at the mouth of a dark, artificial crevasse between two brightly-painted residential housing complexes. But in her haste she doesn't control her deceleration, and her feet scour two shoe-length grooves in the paving as her eyes fix firmly on the scene in front of her.

A stocky man with peroxide blonde frosted tips that weren't cool even when NSYNC had them has a business-casual clad woman, about his height but half the width, trapped against a plaster alley wall between a trash can and a discarded washing machine. Whatever’s happening, it's nothing good, and Kara moves, lightning fast and without thought.

In less than an instant she’s at their side, crunching her grip down onto the JT-wannabe’s wrist to yank his arm off the woman’s throat. She ignores his yelps as her fingers compress until his bones groan under the pressure and then she spins, hauling him into the middle of the alley. At the same time, she twists his arm so far up his back that his nails could nearly tickle the hairs on the nape of his sunburned neck and he breaks into frightened whimpers when Kara starts to shunt him forwards. He tries to resist but she just jabs a knee into his spine, pushing and pressing until his cheek and chest collide with the opposite wall. He grunts as he squirms against her steel hold but she pays him little mind, keeping him trapped in place with an infinitesimal expense of effort as she turns to the quivering woman who hasn’t moved an inch since Kara arrived.

“Are you okay?”

The woman opens her mouth as if to say something, but no noise comes out. So, after a beat, she snaps her jaw shut and twitches her head yes, clutching her handbag closer to her abdomen.

“Do you want me to call the police?” Kara follows with a few moments later, once she’s fished the words she needs out of her memory banks.

The woman’s responding head shake is firm, vigorous and elongated, and her assailant must glimpse it out the corner of his eye because a crude grin starts to creep across his lips. But that only lasts until Kara spots it, because the sight of his smug face fills her with a withering rage that drives her to heave his arm further up his back. And she feels no sympathy as he cries out, features screwed up in pain as the connective tissue in his shoulder strains on the edge of breaking. She just wedges him harder against the wall and turns her head back to the brunette who is slowly shuffling towards the exit of the alley, posture tense and skittish.

“Can someone come pick you up?” she asks gently, loud enough to be heard but not so loud as to startle. “Or do you want me to walk you home?”

But the woman just shakes her head again, silently pointing upwards as if to say she only needs to get up there and Kara barely gets through the first syllable of an “okay” before the woman is scuttling out of view, making straight for her front steps.

Which leaves Kara, alone, with a man who keeps muttering under his breath. She doesn’t understand what he’s saying, but she can tell from his tone that it’s probably lecherous and vile, and it - along with what he's done - makes angry bile rise in her throat until it burns so acidicly on the back of her tongue that she can't take it anymore. And, from there, everything starts to happen impulsively quickly.

She thrusts the hand that’s clamped onto his wrist towards the sky, lifting him off the ground as his shoulder pops violently and then she releases, letting him drop to ground to writhe in agony. And she could just leave him there, one limb wrecked and hopefully lesson taught. She _should_ just leave him there like that. But as she moves to step away, a vindictive urge overcomes her and she follows its vicious lead without question, stomping down on the man’s knee until his patella turns to dust under her heel.   

But, even though it all happens in mere seconds, it feels like an eternity to Kara; like everything is happening in slow motion. Like she can feel each individual snap of every tendon and muscle that gives way, one by one, as she cranks the head of the man's humerus out of his shoulder socket. Like she can feel the crack of each fracture in his kneecap as the bone crumbles into something unrecognisable. Like each ounce of pain she inflicts releases a commensurate ounce of fury from the vast lake of anger that resides behind the dam of her grief.

It feels _good_.

And it feels like he deserves it.

So the howling screams that echo off the walls behind her as she stalks out of the alley into the orange glow of sunset inspire no guilt in her. Nor does any shame blossoms as she strides down the sidewalk, awareness of his continued shrieks lost to the glasses that neuter her hearing when she drops them back onto her nose. And at no point during the 6-mile speed-walk back to her rundown hotel does any remorse surface through the power trip that electrifies her nerves.

It’s not until she clatters through the green door to her room and straggles towards the ratty single bed that sits beneath a row of grimy windows, that it hits. Or rather, it hits that it’s not hitting.

Because, as she stares out at her spectacular view of a plain brick fence, it finally sinks in that she left a man broken and crying in an alley, with a leg and an arm that’ll probably never work properly again, and she really doesn't give a damn. She may be starting to feel bad about _not_ feeling bad, but she still can’t bring herself to actually care about what she’s done.

And that’s sickening. Because that’s not who she’s supposed to be.

It’s not who Supergirl - shining with hope, help and compassion for all - would be.

It’s not who Kara Danvers - leaking empathy and kindness from every pore - would be.

Instead, it’s reminiscent of her mother.  Alura may have utilised Fort Rozz rather than manual dislocations but she did take it upon herself to harshly dispense judgment and punishment under the guise of deserved justice.

And that’s who Kara has become. Because she’s fled so far from the looming spectre of everything Supergirl represents that she’s lost all that was good about her too. And somewhere along the way Kara Danvers became collateral damage and all that remains is Kara Zor-El: broken, callous and cold.

It’s visceral, acknowledging her transformation, and something like disgust snakes up the ladder of her spine until it can wrap around her head and foster a tension in her jaw that makes her teeth clench so hard they ache. And she just wants to make it go away.

She just wants to make all of it go away.

But she can’t actually reach inside her own skull and pluck out all the thoughts and feelings and memories that she wants to obliterate. So she settles for sloping into the miniscule bathroom instead, squeezing into the narrow gap between the wall and the toilet so she can flick the faucet on. The liquid that fills her hands when she shoves them under the tap is murky and lukewarm from stewing in hot pipes all day, but she can’t be bothered worrying about it as she splashes the water onto her face in an attempt to regain some semblance of emotional equilibrium.

And maybe it would’ve worked if she didn’t accidentally open her eyes when her hands occupied most of her field of view.

But she does do that.

So she’s stuck staring - staring at hands that could crush this dirty porcelain sink into nothing without even trying; hands that have already caused so much carnage and destruction; hands that, with just a dash of Red Kryptonite, were delighted to throw Cat Grant off a building to prove a point; hands that, with just a sprinkling of annoyance, were thrilled to nearly rip a man’s arm from his body to achieve catharsis; hands that are alien and dangerous and _hers_.

And as she stares, a need starts to flow through her body. A need that grows and grows and grows until it thunders from her head to her toes with each pulse of her shattered heart. A need for warmth and softness. A need for stability and connection. A need for _humanity_.

.

.

.

A need for Alex.

* * *

Alex is drunk. Very drunk. So drunk that she can't tell if her eyeballs ache because she cried for nearly two hours or because she’s strained them trying to read the miniscule print that runs along the bottom of her Red Label bottle. 

And she’s lonely. Very lonely. So lonely that she lurches out of her chair and staggers, with still damp socks squelching unpleasantly in her shoes, over to her jacket by the door even though she knows, all too fucking well, that what she’s about to do is futile.

It takes more attempts than Alex would ever admit to fumble her phone out of jacket pocket because her fine motor skills are severely degraded by the sheer volume of ethanol currently pickling her liver. But, despite that impediment, she does eventually manage to wrestle the zip down and wriggle the device out into her hand.

It’s a monumental achievement, but it also required such intent concentration and persistent determination that she’s burnt herself out and traversing back across 20 swaying feet of lounge to collapse onto her couch just feels like too much extra work. So she doesn't. Instead, she slumps cross-legged onto the floor and squints at her phone as she tries to make it recognise her thumb print. Because, at this point, she’s not convinced she could actually remember her passcode if she needed it.

Once she’s in, her thumb hovers indecisively over her home screen as she considers her options. She could call. But if she has to hear-

“Hi, you've reached Kara Danvers and I- oh shoot!”

_Clatter. Whoosh… Beep._

-one more time, she’s going to chuck her phone at the wall.

It used to be comforting. Because she used to scrounge a hint of Kara to hold on to out of the sound of her voice and the memory of the day eight months ago when Kara tried to update her mobile answering machine, only to be interrupted mid-message by news of a 7-car wreck that made her launch into hero mode and drop her phone without a second thought. But now, after months, it just grates.

Probably because Alex has heard it at least 300 times.

So Alex doesn't call. She just pulls up the message app and prods at the screen to fire off a text she hopes is legible. And then she flops back, exhausted, onto her laminate, fake-wooden floorboards and stares at the ceiling fan she’s never actually switched on as an untamed menagerie of emotions runs riot through her long-suffering body.

But one thing she doesn't feel amongst the mess, as she sprawls prone on the ground wondering whether there's anybody in the world who does use a ceiling fan, is an expectation that her phone will ring. Especially not in that tone she set just for Kara after she left, back when Alex didn't want to miss the call she thought had to come sooner rather than later. Because it's now later than later and Alex gave up that hope a long time ago.

But the unmistakable trilling that Alex chose specifically because it was so obnoxious does start blaring out of the speaker and she’s so surprised that she accidentally kicks her phone halfway across the room in her scramble to pick it up. And she could just stand and walk over to retrieve it like a normal adult with a serious job and lots of responsibilities, but that seems like a lot of effort when she’s this tanked and tired.

So she doesn't do that.

What she does do is crawl, but not like a commando, because apparently even that would be too respectable for her current state. No. What she does is crawl, like a baby, across the terrain of her apartment until she can fetch her phone from beneath the coffee table. 

And it's surprisingly hard work.

At least, that’s her excuse for why she finds herself breathless and lost for words when she hits answer and squishes the device against her ear.

* * *

Kara is gazing uncertainly at her phone, teetering on the precipice of backing out of this whole misguided gambit, when the screen lights up with Alex’s name and a message notification. And, for the first time in 102 days, the sight doesn’t make her intestines tie themselves in knots. Although, they actually do still kind of do that. But there's also something a lot like affection that takes up residence in her chest and that's enough to make her swipe into -

 _07:59 pm  
_**Alex:** M drunk

 _08:01 pm  
_**Alex:** Calk mr 

And then Kara rolls her eyes, affection slipping away behind a thin film of exasperation. She’s not sure what she was expecting but this… this wouldn't be that far from the top of the list, actually. Because Kara has been Alex’s sister for 13 years and she knows her proclivities. 

She also knows what Alex wants, despite the egregious typos, and honestly… it's all she wants too. But she’s reluctant to fully admit that to herself so she hems and haws for another several minutes before her hands seize the initiative from her mind and take action before she can think herself out of it.

Alex answers on the fourth ring.

But her only greeting is heavy, irregular breathing down the line and Kara’s forehead creases with concern. “Hello?”

“‘lo,” Alex slurs back and Kara’s frown deepens.

“You’re really drunk for…” Kara pauses as she pulls her phone away from her ear to tap into the world clock. “Four in the afternoon? Seriously Alex?”

She doesn't mean for it to come across as scathing as it does, especially given that she’s not really in a good place to judge other people’s life choices right now, but it just falls out that way and once it does, she can't put it back. And in response, all Kara gets is a not awkward, but also not comfortable silence that stretches on and on for longer than she knows what to do with. So she just tries to wait it out and keep herself occupied, plucking at the pills on her well-worn pants until Alex finally drawls out a, “Yup,” that’s thick with whiskey and sadness.

It’s a tone Kara would recognise anywhere, and she can’t help but soften.

“What’s up?”

Alex’s answer melds with a deep groan that she releases from low in her lungs, and Kara has to strain her ears to pick out the words from beneath the rumbling.

“Broke up wi’ Maggie.”

Which explains the whiskey. And the sadness. Even if it does make the crinkle between Kara's eyebrows regrow, this time from confusion rather than concern, because as far as she can recall Alex broke up with Maggie more than a year ago.

But, even though she's confused, Kara does want to say something. She wants to ask what happened. And she wants to dredge up a platitude that might ease the hurt that twines and twists and twirls so obviously through every syllable that’s forced out of Alex’s mouth. But she never gets the chance because, before she can open her own mouth, Alex starts vomiting words into the phone.

"I know we weren't together, bu' we were together y'unno?"

Kara doesn't mention that she doesn't know.

"Bu' we can't be _together_ together,” Alex continues through sniffles that tug roughly at Kara’s taut and tenuous heartstrings. “Because we still want diff'rent things an- and s'not fair but we have to stop being together because we can't but..."

“But?” Kara gently prompts a few moments later, after a sneaking suspicion builds that Alex isn't going to finish that sentence under her own volition.

"But now errything sucks," Alex sighs with an undercurrent of anger that sparks around the edges. "An' the scotch was 'sposed to make everything better, but errything still sucks and love is a jerk and I'm sad! Sad and drunk and-" the angry undercurrent is subsumed by a thick wave of gloom, “-lonely. And verrrrry drunk.”

As Alex talks, the gears in Kara’s mind churn through the cream of her thoughts until she’s left with a butter ball of an idea that wedges itself so tightly into the grooves of her brain that she couldn’t pry it out with all her strength. Because the idea is as stubborn as it is terrible it won't let her think of anything other than _6000 miles at an average of Mach-8…_

“I can be there in an hour.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that Lena's canonically 24 or whatever but I've just called bullshit and ignored that here


	10. A meat cleaver and a mistake (or three)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I know this is crazy late. I know. But I had it nearly ready to go, then July really fucked me seven ways til Sunday and not one of them was fun. I got horrible news about a friend, my car broke down hundreds of kms from home, my washing machine broke, my phone broke, I got chillblains etc etc etc. Then uni started back up again and nothing saps the joy out of writing like essay season.
> 
> But it's here now and okay, so it's actually mainly just a metric fuck-tonne of filler but it's something? I was originally going to skip over all of this almost entirely but then I felt like it deserved a bit of detail because it's a big thing and that turned into a lot of detail I can't be bothered to cut. So you know, it is what it is but I do have to say there is a part of that really might make you wonder what I was thinking. Honestly though, I can explain
> 
> Dedicated to a certain almost-Luna because you inspired a radical change in this chapter and I wouldn't be getting it up now without you. 
> 
> (She thinks she'll be menopausal before I finish this fic)

_Trying to re-position a partially exposed wire with his bare hands probably wasn't his…_ **_smartest_ ** _move, he thinks as muscles convulse beneath his skin, volts upon volts of misdirected electricity lancing from one set of extremities to the other._

* * *

"I can be there in an hour."

Kara winces as soon as her lips close around the last syllable of her short sentence, regret trickling down her spine because she didn't mean to say it. In fact, she actively tried not to say it. But the words dodged and danced and dived around her efforts to contain them, slipping out through a crack in her self control to splatter themselves across the unmentioned distance between sisters.

Alex is clearly surprised because Kara can practically hear her slow, dubious blinking as she asks, "What?"

And really, it's the perfect opportunity for Kara to take it all back. To pretend she never offered what she offered. To round up each stray kitten of a word and return them one by one to the cage of her mouth from which they never should've escaped. But she's not sure she wants to. Not when she hears the light hint of hope that stains Alex's question despite her attempts to restrain it.

So she doesn't.

"I can be there in an hour," she repeats instead.

And Alex replies with a strained approximation of squeak, small and disbelieving in a way that makes something clench painfully somewhere inside Kara's chest.

"Really?"

"...Yes."

Then a silence blooms, billowing into the conversational space that Alex mustn't know how to fill. And it's okay, at first. Kara just waits, absorbing the quiet weight of words thought but not spoken. But as a minute drags on, then another and another... it becomes unbearable. Because Kara's nagging conviction that she's making a huge mistake builds and builds and builds, doubt colonising every corner of her mind. And eventually, she just has to say something or else that doubt is certain to overcome her.

"So... uh," she starts, voice quivering. It's imperceptible enough that Alex probably doesn't notice but Kara resents it nonetheless.

"I guess I'll- um." She tries again. "I guess I'll see you soon?"

Alex leaves Kara hanging. For an awkward moment or three, heavy silence crushing down on Kara's shoulders until she almost feels like her knees are going to buckle under the pressure. But then the elder Danvers swallows thickly and lets out a watery snuffle. "Yes. Please."

Alex sounds like she's on the verge of tears and it's Kara turn to not know how to respond. So she just stands by the foot of her rickety, bug-infested bed, phone hanging impotently in her loose grip as an ominous sting burns in her sinuses.

But Kara doesn't want to cry right now. She can't cry right now. Because if she starts she doesn't know if she'll ever be able to stop. And she can't be sure but, if Kara still knows her sister after everything, the same is true of Alex. So too many interminable seconds pass by, filled only with two sets of uneven breathing as both sisters claw at the battered and fraying stitches of their emotional seams, trying to hold themselves together when everything just wants to fall apart.

Then, almost out of nowhere, Kara blurts out, "Okay um, bye then?"

Because... whatever this is? She can't do it anymore.

She moves to peel her phone away from her ear, thumb skating towards the end call button even before Alex quietly husks, "Yeah... bye," in return, tone gravelly with feeling.

But just as Kara is about to tap down on the red disconnect circle, Alex hollers, "Oh! No! Wait!"

And with her nerves already on tenterhooks, Kara gets such a fright that shock jolts through her body and she nearly flings her phone out the window.

It's startling. It shakes her. And afterwards, as her hands quake and her whole frame remains tense, she needs a while.

She needs a while to centre herself. To settle the diaphragm that’s flaring erratically in the fleshy triangle between the hard edges of her rib cage. To suck several stabilising breaths far down into the depths of her lungs.

And she needs a while to press a calming hand to the base of her throat, so firmly that it would pulverise human tissue, in the hopes it might help slow her frantically beating heart.

Only after that – only after the tremors ease and she can finally think through the sound of her own thundering blood flow – can she talk.

But she's still on edge and she doesn't care if she's being mean as she raises her cell back to her ear and snaps, "What?"

Alex makes a moist whistling noise in response, almost as if she's stuck her tongue out between her teeth and wetly suctioned air through the small gaps at the side. "Didya ge' my email?"

Kara doesn't bother to ask which one. "No."

A stiff beat passes and Kara steeples her free fingers against her temple, trying to ward off the rabid guilt that suddenly wants to gnaw through her bones.

"I moved," Alex finally announces, stilted and stand-offish.

"Oh," Kara replies, and another discomforting pause brews between the sisters until Kara finally asks, "Where to?"

"Uptown," Alex sniffs, and Kara rolls her eyes because she forgets Alex knows.

She forgets Alex knows that the unique flicker of her pulse is tattooed onto Kara's brain. And she forgets Alex knows that the faint sloshing of her innocent heart murmur is enough for Kara to find her anywhere – anytime they're in the same 94 mile radius.

Instead, Kara just assumes Alex is so far gone that she doesn't realise she needs to give an actual address. That, or she's being deliberately difficult. And either option is irritating enough that Kara doesn't try to stop annoyance leaking into her tone as she snipes, "Where uptown?"

Alex doesn't reply. At least, not verbally. There's just the rustle of clothing and a scrabbling sound, followed by the squeak of rubber soles on a hard surface and the creak of unoiled door hinges.

"Are you checking _your own_ apartment number?" Kara asks, incredulous, in the brief seconds before Alex triumphantly announces, ""2/26! Big building, corner o' Sutton 'nd Oak. I think?"

"You _think?_ "

"I'm 80- no... _90_ percent sure."

Alex speaks without a skerrick of irony and Kara just sighs, smoothing her left thumb and forefinger across her eyebrows as if that might soothe the frustration that's starting to simmer in her emotional cauldron.

* * *

The line clicks dead not long after that, leaving Alex stranded alone in her doorway with the memory of Kara's terse goodbye echoing around inside her ear canals. Her phone is clutched in a suddenly sweaty palm and she sways, unsteady in every sense of the word.

But she doesn't move.

At least, not immediately. Because moving requires concentration. And any capacity for concentration she might have is lost amongst the potent mix of hurt and relief that swirls in eddies through the muddied waters of her inebriated thoughts.

//

Kara hasn't flown since that night. She hasn't needed to. More importantly, she hasn't wanted to.

And to be honest, she still doesn't want to. Not really. Which is one of the _many_ reasons why she never should've committed to this and it's one of the few reasons why she never meant to commit to this.

But she did. Commit to this. And now she has to fly.

Fly _there_.

To National City.

Because reneging on an unspoken promise to her heartbroken and hammered sister would be such a prime example of cruelty that not even Kara can consider it.

Instead, she secures her phone in her front pants pocket and steps out of her room into the dim hallway, even though just the thought it – the thought of soaring and steering and swooping through the sky towards the scene of such suffering – makes apprehension ball low in her gut until it coalesces into a hard lump of fear. Then she heads for the stairwell and that hard lump only tightens, forming a solid rock of dread.

It's the kind of dread that spawns revulsion: a revulsion that clogs her digestive tract and clambers up her throat until it clings to her tonsils like an infection, filling her mouth with the metallic tang of disgust.

And she doesn't know if she's disgusted by the idea of National City or just by the idea of herself. But she does know that the feeling is so strong it almost crystallises, visibly, before her very eyes as she shoulders through a flimsy tin door, heaves out a sigh and starts trudging up flea-bitten steps.

//

All Alex has wanted for more than three months is for Kara to just talk to her.

Now she has.

And more than that, she's coming over. Or, at least she _says_ she's coming over. Which is great. So great. But Kara also admitted to outright ignoring her, and Alex isn't necessarily surprised but it's still not great. So _not_ great.

And Alex doesn't like it.

Because it’s a truth that stabs crudely at the tender mulched pulp beating beneath her ribs in a pained imitation of a heart. And it's intense, too intense, when she's sick of intensity.

Plus it feels bad, too bad, when she's sick of feeling bad. But mostly it's just too much, _way_ too much, when she's sick of feeling anything at all.

Alex does know how to make it go away, though. She knows how to make it all go away.

So easily.

The scotch is right there. Sitting on the coffee table. Tempting. _So_ tempting. Because all she has to do is keep throwing it back. Just like she does most evenings. Then each heavy pound of intensity and badness and too much-ness will bleed away, along with any vestiges of sobriety that might still linger around the far reaches of her consciousness.

//

During her short journey to the hotel's shabby roof, Kara tries to just focus on her breathing. She tries to relax. And she tries to place her ever growing sense of aversion aside. Because if she can't do that, then she won't get off the ground. And if she doesn't get off the ground, then... as Alex would say, everything is fucked.

But letting go is hard. So hard.

Especially when she emerges out of the glorified trapdoor at the end of the stairwell into sticky night air that clings claustrophobically to her skin, rousing an unbidden awareness of the physical vessel in which she resides.

It’s an unbidden awareness of her body. The same body she wants to forget about. The body she _needs_ to forget about.

As if dissociating from her corporeal form might soften the harsh reality of what she's about to do, and where she's about to go.

//

It's just before 4:25 pm when Alex finally staggers back into her apartment. And all she wants to do is grab a nip of water, then down whiskey until she can't remember how to think. Because she just wants to feel better. Or nothing. She'd take feeling nothing, too. Even that would be better than this. This... _ick_.

But, as she weaves through her lounge along a path that's about as straight as she is, there's something else in her head too.

A chorus.

A chorus that hums in the tune of everyone who's ever suggested maybe she'd _had enough_ , or maybe she should _slow down_.

A chorus that plagues her with repeated pleas to be sensible, to look after herself, to make good choices; an annoying list of things that Alex doesn't want to be or do.

Not now. Not today.

//

Kara's self awareness only gets worse as she picks across the rooftop's aged tiles and she approaches the edge with nervous energy thrumming from top to toe.

Then, as she slides her glasses off her nose and zips them into her jacket pocket, that nervous energy morphs into a sludgy kind of anxiety that reminds her of the cheap foundation she wore once – when she was 16 and didn't know better. Because it clogs so deeply and so tightly into her pores that it feels like not even paint stripper would remove it.

Maybe that anxiety and all its viscous potency is why Kara can't seem to just make herself jump or drop or fall into the empty expanse in front of her and let instinct take over. Not even as she shuffles the tips of her toes over the precipice.

And maybe that anxiety, in all its molten ferocity, is why she finds herself trapped by emotional inertia, hovering indecisively on the verge, eyes flicking between the mottled pavement 70 ft below and the lilac curtains fluttering in the half-open window across the alley.

//

Alex tries to ignore her sensible side as she stumbles into the kitchen and snags a mug off the drying rack. But her involuntary concerns are stubborn in their insistence. And as she drops her cup into the sink, not caring when she accidentally twists the hot faucet, they proliferate through every inch of her mind, curling into even the most forgotten of nooks and crannies to hiss at her from all angles.

//

Anxiety or not, Kara probably– _definitely_ can't stay here, immobile at the top of a cheap Argentinian hostel forever.

So, at some point, she tips her gaze upwards and rakes her eyes across a murky sky bereft of stars; the glow of distant suns lost behind patchy cloud cover and the city's light pollution. She pauses there for a fleeting moment, losing herself in the enormity of the universe.

But she probably– _definitely_ can't stay like that forever, either.

So at some other point she drops into a quarter crouch, eyelids drifting shut as she focuses on the taut tension in her thighs. And she pauses again, but only ever so briefly. Then, with her eyes still closed, Kara unfurls.

Kara unfurls and she launches.

She launches and hurls herself into the air, erupting off the ground with such an explosive straightening of her legs that she's flung more than a hundred feet up before flight kicks in.

//

Alex chugs the 135 degree fluid in her cup without concern for her mouth and it almost scalds her tongue, but she hardly cares.

Then she clunks the mug down onto the counter and moves to wander into her living room, trying to ignore the howls of her wiser self who just wants her to _stop_. But it's hard when that wiser self only increases exponentially in volume as Alex approaches her bottle of Red Label, thumping one foot down after the other in a haphazard series of poorly-selected steps.

By the time Alex's fingers wrap around Johnnie's neck, that better part of her she barely recognises is hysterical and screeching, locked in a violent clash with the desperate desire– the desperate _need_ to drink that burns in Alex's very marrow.

It's a fight that ultimately plays out without Alex's direct input; the tussle between her impulses and her last scraps of sound judgement banishing her to the periphery of her own decision-making. And as she watches herself from the sidelines, conflicted grip tightening around the cool glass in her hand, she honestly doesn't know which side is going to win.

//

The force of Kara's takeoff sends cracks spidering across the roof tiles but she doesn't know that as she leaves them far behind, aiming for an overhanging cloud slightly to her left and accelerating until she can go no faster without blowing out windows or deafening a quarter of Buenos Aires with a sonic boom.

Wind rushes through her hair as she climbs and her ponytail starts to come apart, newly loose strands lashing at her neck and whipping around her face as she punches through the base of a low-lying cumulus formation.

The cloud saves her from the immediate risk of being seen, but it also brings its own problems. Because aerial conglomerations of water are always a lot less fluffy and a lot more wet than they first appear and that means, by the time Kara bursts into clear air somewhere around 16,000 ft, she's on the dripping side of damp.

But the streams of water that flow off her as she jets ever higher are the least of her worries.

Because to be aloft feels as natural as breathing and sometimes, these days, Kara struggles with breathing. Sometimes, these days, each cubic inch of air that slithers into her lungs feels like poison; like the oxygen that fuels her cells is spitefully keeping her alive in a life she's not convinced she wants to live anymore.

And if breathing can feel wrong, flight is so much worse. Because it triggers an inevitable flood of endorphins – a hormonal rush that induces a sacrilegious and sickening kind of euphoria; the kind that leaves her light headed and buzzing with a high she used to be addicted to. The same high that now just itches in her veins until she wants to extract every blood vessel from her body just to make it stop.

She can't, though, and the feeling lingers – an unwelcome house guest in her emotional landscape as she ascends through nearly 1100 feet per second.

//

In retrospect, Alex probably should've known how stupid it was to even suggest that the allure of scotch might succumb to sense.

//

It starts as a trickle, somewhere around 57,000 ft; a gentle flow of power that huddles deep in Kara's cells. Because a halo of setting sunlight appears across the horizon as she threads through the stratosphere and it emits a whole spectrum of radiation that she can literally feel piercing into the very core of her existence.

It's a familiar sensation: one so similar to the first time she stepped out into the sun after Lena died.

But it's also monstrously grander in scale.

Because at this height, even with the sun at a low angle, she's buffeting by such intense waves of UV that it's almost like she's swimming in a sea of it. A sea of energy that grows and grows and grows as she skims through the dregs of the ozone layer, until she's practically immersed in an ocean of it. An ocean of radiation that coils kinetic potential in every fibre of her every muscle, feeding a stockpile of pent up speed that skitters impatiently beneath her skin.

And all that confined velocity pushes and presses and probes about the boundaries of her self-control, urging her to hurry up and shatter the sound barrier already.

//

Relief starts to tingle across Alex's skin as soon as the first gulp of liquid catharsis scorches solace down her throat, spreading a comforting puddle of warmth out from the pit of her stomach even before the alcoholic fumes have stopped stinging in her nose.

And sure it's almost entirely a placebo but it's enough to take the edge off. It's enough to smooth the turbulent feelings that have been giving her emotional whiplash ever since Kara's name flashed across her phone screen. And it's enough to mute the cruel part of her that wants to judge herself for everything she's done and all the ways she's coped through these past months.

And for Alex, that'll do. For now, anyway.

//

Kara has to wrestle with herself to hold subsonic until she's high enough to mitigate the effects of an inevitable shockwave. But she knows she's nearly there once she's so far above Earth that her saliva boils in her mouth, fizzing against her tongue and the insides of her cheeks in a way that almost reminds her of popping candy.

And she knows she’s even closer once her lungs start to protest despite their Kryptonian efficiency, struggling to suck enough oxygen out of the thin stratospheric air.

//

Alex ends up lying on the floor instead of the couch. She isn't sure how and, although it is possible the hard floorboards appealed to her aching back, she isn't entirely sure why, either.

But here she is, staring blankly up at the ceiling for the second time in half an hour, bottle of scotch lying temporarily abandoned but never forgotten by her hip, close enough to empty that it doesn't even dribble whiskey out onto her rug.

//

Sweat is propagating across Kara's hairline and she's been airborne for three minutes when she finally rotates. Her field of view keels 90 degrees over to the right as she does, and it shifts from the empty expanse of outer space to encompass the body of South America splayed out beneath her across the planet's visibly curved surface.

Towns and cities glow between scattered clouds like organs connected by a vascularity of shining roadways and Kara stares, perhaps for longer than she should, taking it all in.

But then her gaze tilts, tilts up, tilts north-west, tilts towards her destination. And, in a split second, Kara unleashes without ever really having a conscious choice in the matter; releasing all at once the entirety of the potential that's been brewing in her tissues ever since she left the last remnants of ozone in her metaphorical rearview mirror.

She spools up, quickly. So quickly that she can feel her eyeballs being squeezed back into their sockets. And it's in that instant, as a boom she doesn't hear cracks and ripples through the atmosphere, that she realises she's made a terrible mistake.

* * *

Back when Supergirl was new, she broke her suit. A lot. Because no Earth fabric, no matter how tough, was designed to withstand the wear and tear that came with being wrapped around a super-powered, crime-fighting alien.

So Winn spent a lot of time on patch jobs. Or sometimes, after a particularly strenuous sequence of incidents, he'd toil away for an entire night to craft a whole new set of suits because Kara was all out of spares. But then, after a three month period in which James accurately accused him of being behind a sewing machine more often than a Project Runway contestant, Lena took pity on him.

Or maybe she took pity on Kara who got her skirt ripped half off in an especially gnarly encounter involving a truck and very strong, very angry Fort Rozz escapee that ended with Supergirl blasting up, up and away before anyone could snap a picture of her crotch.

Or maybe the situation just sparked the incandescent flame of Lena's vast intellectual curiosity and sent the indomitable boulder of her relentless determination careening down the hill of her immense technical and financial resources.

But regardless, most of her friends barely saw her for weeks. It got to the point where, after the fourth consecutive games night from which Lena was conspicuously absent, Maggie suggested that maybe she'd died and none of them had noticed.

Kara’s only reply was to glower at the detective so fiercely that Maggie, never usually one to back down, held contrite hands up in apology. Otherwise, Alex might've had to stop Kara from lasering holes through her girlfriend's forehead.

Lena was alive, though.

And Kara knew it.

Although that didn't stop her from worrying.

Because the only times she actually saw Lena were when she delivered food that would've just gone cold on Jess' desk if Kara didn't drag Lena away from her work for 15 minutes. And because one day Kara discovered that Lena had recently fallen asleep at 5 am with her face pressed into a microscope; waking two hours later with such spectacular rims around her eyes that they warranted cancelling her early video conference.

In the end, that turned out to be Kara’s last straw.

The following week, while Lena inhaled her leafy greens like she hadn't eaten since Kara brought her lunch the previous day, Kara confronted her about her refusal to take care of herself. And at first Lena just hemmed and hawed and scrunched up her nose like she wanted to object on semantic grounds.

But she must've decided better of it because she eventually lay a conciliatory hand on Kara's knee instead and earnestly promised to try to look after herself a little more.

Except Kara wasn't convinced and she tried to look stern even though Lena's proximity was setting her nerve endings on fire, hypocritically admonishing, "Do or do not, there is no try."

Lena laughed at that, throaty and genuine in a way that made her whole face light up. And it also made Kara feel like she was about to combust from the sheer intensity of her urge to lean over and kiss Lena until neither of them remembered which way was up.

Which was weird, because they were friends.

 _Best friends_.

And Kara was no expert but she was pretty sure that making out wasn't something best friends usually wanted to do with each other.

So she shoved the urge far down into the closet of shame she kept at the back of her mind, stuffing it somewhere near her appreciation of Lena's cleavage in those almost inappropriately low cut work dresses, and tried not to dwell on what it all meant. Because she couldn't be in love with her very female, very straight best friend.

She just couldn't.

Being in love with her best friend would make things complicated, when one of the best things about Lena was that being with her wasn't complicated. Despite all the difficulty that should've come with friendship between a Super and a Luthor, being around Lena was easy and it was simple and it was fun, when they both desperately needed it because neither of their lives were often any of those things.

That's why their time together was something special. It was a reprieve. And it was something that, for both of their sakes', Kara couldn't afford to ruin.

So to derail any other traitorous thoughts that might've wanted to sully her platonic relationship with L-Corp's CEO, Kara asked Lena about the project that had her sneaking down to R&D whenever she had the chance. But Lena was circumspect with the details, offering nothing more than another a promise; this time a promise to tell Kara everything about it once it was ready. Just not yet. In case she jinxed it. Because Lena, for all her intellect, wasn't totally above dabbling in superstition.

But Lena, for all her Luthor lineage, was completely above breaking her promises.

So she did try to look after herself more, even if she didn't necessarily succeed. And one day in the middle of summer she banged on Kara's apartment door, lugging a gigantic case inside as soon as Kara made space for her to squeeze through.

Then, while Kara was still marvelling at Lena’s ability to carry something half as big as she was in such an impractical skirt and uncomfortable stilettos, the CEO turned and asked—

"Do you want to see what I've been working on?"

–with her voice bright and excited in that way she only got when she'd made something she was proud of. That same way that made Kara's heart feel so feather-light in her chest that she thought the buoyancy could almost lift her off the ground.

[Because sometimes, it did. Sometimes Kara got so caught up in Lena's rare expressions of enthusiasm – the open, unbridled joy that nobody else got to see quite like Kara did because Lena usually locked it away behind the bars of Lillian's decorum training – that she would float a couple of inches of the ground. Then Lena would always notice and laugh, tugging her back down to the floor with a touch that lingered a little longer than it perhaps should have between friends.]

"Uh, is Britney Spears an icon?" Kara replied. "Yes! _Of course_ I want to see it!"

And Lena smiled, eyes crinkling affectionately at the edges as she crouched down atop teeteringly high heels, flicking the latches on her case and flipping the lid to reveal—

"It's a flexible carbon polymer weave." Lena gestured at the red and blue rolls of fabric in front of her. "And if my tests are correct, not even you should be able to wreck it.” She glanced up at Kara. “Not easily, anyway.”

* * *

Lena’s tests were correct. Kara hasn't suffered a suit failure ever since Winn stitched Lena's material into his next generation of creations.

But today...

Today, Kara isn't wearing her indestructible supersuit made of L-Corp's patented answer to most of Kevlar's flaws.

Today, Kara is clad in regular person clothes made of a poly-cotton blend that was never supposed to be exposed to the forces of supersonic (let alone hypersonic) flight. So it's all she can do to clamp a hand around her glasses before her jacket disintegrates, disappearing behind her in an explosion of fabric.

The rest of her attire soon follows, shirt tearing asunder and jeans shredding down the seams before they flitter down to the foothills far below as she blows through 3200 mph mere seconds later. And that's how Kara finds herself hurtling through the stratosphere in nothing but her birthday suit, glasses clutched tightly in her fist, memories of Lena rising from the mental coffin she usually tries to bury them in.

[Because, no matter how innocuous, they're all such raw reminders of the woman Kara doesn't know how to thrive without.]

And this was not the plan. This was never the plan.

But she doesn't bail out and peel back towards her hotel, because her sister is expecting her and landing buck naked in Argentina isn't any less of a logistical nightmare than doing it in the contiguous United States. Instead, she pushes on and flips side-to-side through a series of barrel rolls sharp enough to pull double digit Gs. Just because she can, and just in case the torque might suction her messy emulsion of emotions out her ears.

But, ultimately, all the aerobatics do is make her brain rattle around in her skull like a coin in a piggy bank shaken by an angry child.

So when she levels off and starts to track towards Alex along the spine of the Andes, she's wracked by vision that keeps spinning long after her body has stopped. And she's wrought with grief that festers in the open wound of her memories, oozing a voluminous pus of loneliness that swamps everything in its path to form a stinking abscess of distress.

//

The floor isn't as comfortable as Alex thought it would be. Her sacrum is already starting to hurt where her body weight is pressing it into the ground and she's pretty sure her ass is about to bruise where her phone is digging into her butt cheek.

So even though the rest of her spine was appreciating the stretch, Alex rolls onto her side and curls into a loose foetal position, pulling Johnnie into her chest to be the little spoon that Maggie never would be ever again.

He's not as nice to cuddle as she was.

Maggie was almost always warm, and the lines and curves and angles of her body became so familiar that even the ways they didn't always fit quite right against Alex grew to feel like home.

By contrast, Johnnie feels nothing like home – at least not while he's cradled in her arms, tucked beneath her chin. His neck is cold where it presses into hers, his corners are sharp where they jab into her collar bones, and his edges are hard where they're wedged into her biceps. But alcohol is just about the last love she has left in her life, so he'll have to do.

//

Kara sears through the atmosphere at a blistering pace and her distress abides as a noxious discomfort: one that builds in tandem with the frictional heat coursing across the exposed surface of her skin until she's racing over Peru and a fetid sadness is starting to rot in her clenched jaw.

//

Alex tries to tell herself that the tears starting to leak from the corners of her eyes are only because she's been staring directly at her bright decorative lamp for too long. But in reality, she's been fixing her gaze on that light because she needs an excuse to cry; a viable explanation for the sobs about to shake her shoulders that doesn't make her think of everything she's lost.

Because thinking of everything she's lost makes her chest feel like it's going to collapse in on itself, sternum caving into the almost empty hollow beneath her ribs where her heart used to live before Lena died and took Kara with her; before she got Maggie back only for nothing to have changed in all the worst ways.

She's already felt that pain too often in her life. She doesn't need it again.

//

She's roaring over the Pacific and pelting past a hundred miles of Mexico's coastline every minute when a cringe-worthy realisation looms up out of the recesses of Kara’s mind to overtake all other thoughts.

She's flying beneath a litany of observational satellites.

And if any of them have shutter speeds fast enough to capture a clear image of an object travelling at more than 6000 mph then... it's only a matter of time before _'Supergirl Makes X-Rated Debut!'_ is splashed across a picture of her ass on TMZ's homepage.

//

Eventually, Alex's tears run dry for a second time and her sobs trail off into hiccups, leaving in their wake cracked tracks of salt on her cheeks and a thumping headache between her temples. Then the hiccups fade into shaky breaths that rattle unconvincingly into her haggard lungs and one hand comes up to wipe roughly at her face, trying to scrub away the evidence of her breakdown. The other hand, meanwhile, scrabbles around the edge of her rug in a hunt for dear Johnnie who tumbled out of her grip sometime in the last 20 minutes.

Her fingers soon meet familiar glass and she groans as her tired neck struggles to lift her lump of a head far enough off the floor to swig a mouthful or four of average scotch; a process she repeats ad nauseum until the crushing pain at the front of her brain sinks back into the lake of ethanol it came from and the thought of more whiskey is so stomach-churning that Alex almost wants to stop.

Almost, but not quite.

//

The prospect of possibly having her bare behind revealed to anyone with an internet connection or a local tabloid incites in Kara such a distracting drumroll of _oh Rao, please no_ that, as she cruises over the Gulf of California, she fails to appreciate that she's less than ten minutes away.

From there.

From National City.

And it's only once the edge of the municipal boundary appears, as an amorphous string of lights on the horizon, that it starts to hit.

She's nearly back.

To a place painted with titanic triumphs but also a place stained by deep despair.

She's about to arrive.

At a place of such genesis but also a place of such destruction.

She's returning.

To _National City._

The place where Supergirl and L-Corp were both born, but also the place where Lena died and took Supergirl with her.

Only, Kara barely has time to dwell on the meaning of the occasion. Because she's covering a mile every 0.6 seconds and, within seventeen blinks of an eye, she has to slow to a hover above the city's central north-east or else she'll find herself half way to Oregon before she knows it.

//

The soft orange glow of early evening encroaches into Alex's lounge through four large double-hung windows on the room's south-western side; a vivid colour that plasters itself across the agent's surroundings, creeping along the floor and slithering over furniture all while it curls around the walls and licks across the ceiling.

It's impossible for Alex to ignore and, even though she's less drunk as a skunk and more drunker than a skunk, she knows she needs to check the time.

The trouble is she never bothered to mount a wall clock. And she's been lying on the unforgiving floor, half on her front and half on her side in a body that wear and injury have aged beyond its chronological years, for so long that it almost hurts to move.

So when she eventually swings an arm behind herself, it's like her bones creak and her muscles groan. And when she stretches down to fossick for the phone that's still stuck in her back pocket, it's like her tendons crackle and her ligaments pop. Then, as Alex finally gets a grip on her phone and flops her arm back over to where she might be actually able to see the screen, it's like her whole shoulder joint clunks.

//

Kara's deceleration from six times the rate of Earth's rotation to a near standstill is abrupt and immense, and it sends her stomach lurching into her chest cavity, squishing her lungs up somewhere near her collarbones in a way that sort of makes it a bit hard to breathe. But that feeling only lasts until she whips her feet underneath herself in a manoeuvre that forces her organs back down and smooshes them into her spine as she comes to a rest, poised vertically, dizzingly high in the sky.

She hangs there for a short while, bobbing slightly in frigid 5 degree air and staring off into the distance as she bathes reluctantly in the light of a sun that’s barely setting anymore. Then she drops her gaze down and turns to survey the brightly lit web of incoherent urban planning beneath her, as unwelcome radiation dances across her skin where the warmth of flight is starting to bleed away.

She's hunting for any sign of Alex. But when she's this far off the ground, one meandering block blurs into the next and it's hard to tell exactly what she's looking at.

Ultimately, though, it's not actually altitude that renders Kara's vision redundant. It's the fact she's never seen Alex's building before. A fact that means it doesn't matter how low she goes in her foot-first and nervous descent through the atmosphere. She's never going to know what to look for. And once she accepts that, she finally lets her eyes close and gives her ears permission to take over.

It’s a permission they’re happy to take and her hearing reaches out to sift through the city's overwhelming multitudes of ambient noise – from the constant grind of rubber tires on asphalt to the intermittent blaring of ship horns down near the docks and everything in between – in search of the reliable thrum of Alex's pulse.

But Kara is out of practice.

And controlling the wild horses of her supercharged senses is nothing like riding a bike. It's easy, so easy, to forget how.

Which is probably why Kara's attention doesn't narrow down onto Alex when it first cuts through the cacophony of chatter and sirens and footsteps that rises from the bustling evening streets.

And it's probably why, as the vicious wind of a jetstream whistles around her frame and hair snaps at her face like she's a weather reporter in a hurricane, her hearing zeros in on a reflective tower in midtown's business district instead.

The same tower that stands tall and proud as the corporate embodiment of everything Lena stood for and strived for and fought for against the tide of her family's legacy and the resistance of a society that rarely believed in her.

The same tower that looms as a physical representation of the vision Lena poured her whole heart and soul into achieving in a way that fundamentally altered a company and a city and even the world – just like Lena herself had indelibly marked Kara's own soul.

And the same tower Kara has been avoiding the sight of ever since the first hint of it began to climb up into the sky.

Because she knows, if she looks at it, she'll get lost in the sting of the fact a glorified office block survived longer than Lena did. And she knows bitter bile will rise in her throat at the thought that it'll likely still stand years after Lena's body has rotted to compost in the dirt.

But Kara's avoidant luck has run out. And entirely without her consent, she finds herself caught captive by a fraught phone call filtering out of the office at the top of L-Corp. That same office where Lena used to spend most of her waking hours, back when awake was something she could be.

//

_17:28_

_17:28_

_17:28_

The numbers glare at Alex off the LCD in front of her nose, swimming slightly in front of her eyes as the obnoxious brightness of her screensaver resurrects her headache and she groans. Partly from pain, partly because she needs to hide her scotch and partly because she needs dry pants.

She does her best to ignore the party of jackhammers that's rollicking beneath her forehead and eases herself over onto her front, movements slow and ginger. She lets her mobile drop face down to the floor and she pulls her knees up underneath herself, rocking back until she's resting in an accidental Child's Pose that would've done Maggie proud.

The digits on her phone will flip over to _17:31_ before she finally starts to push herself up to sitting. But then she straightens her elbows and shuffles her hands back, supporting her upper body with her arms until her hands eventually come off the floor, the right slapping down atop the coffee table, the left gripping onto the edge of the couch.

From there, she releases a disgruntled croak and levers herself up to standing on knees that grumble in protest before she lurches to her feet. Once she's standing, she turns towards the closed French doors of her bedroom and blinks one, two, three times, to orient herself in space.

When she finally jerks into motion and bumbles forwards, it's with all the grace and dignity of a televangelist confessing to a cheating scandal. And two stumbles later, she hops up on one leg to try to pry a foot out of a boot that's no less soggy than when she first squelched inside.

Not a good decision.

It does work, in that she does get the shoe off. But she also comes within an inch or two of accidentally smashing herself in the face with it when the boot pops free earlier than she was expecting and hurtles towards her nose.

She learns her lesson from that one. After she biffs the first boot over towards a nondescript corner she hasn't known how to decorate, she stops to carefully unlace the second. Then she peels off still wet socks to reveal feet that are more wrinkled than all the residents of an aged care home combined. Really, they're less feet and more a pair of prunes with toes.

That's a mental image Alex honestly could've done without and her upper lip curls with distaste as she clomps through into her bedroom where the the floor is adorned with slightly springy grey carpet. And Alex finds something satisfying about the bounce before she stops near her drawers and starts to fumble with her jeans that are difficult to get off even when they're not damp.

She has to pull and tug and struggle to get them down pale legs that are wizened and softened from moisture exposure, and it's a sight that only serves to remind her of the way her skin macerated during her hours in Rick Malverne's tank.

She tries to blink the memory away.

Because if she remembers that, she'll also remember the bone-deep terror she felt as her tenuous grasp on consciousness slipped away and it truly sunk in that Kara wasn’t going to be able to save her.

And she'll remember the months that followed once the immediate shocked relief of actually being alive wore off. The months where she could barely shower without choking through a panic attack. The months where even rain on her skin made her flinch. The months where she hated to run because the burn that built in her lungs was too viscerally reminiscent of the fire that screamed in her chest as her whole body cried out for oxygen.

And sure, she's better now. She can get in a bath without feeling like she's under attack and she went to the beach once without screaming when a wave crashed over her head.

But she still doesn't want to think about that time in her life.

So as soon as her legs are bare, Alex averts her gaze from the lower half of her body and balls the moist fabric in her hands up into a squishy bundle just to give herself something to do. Then she spins on her heel and hoofs that bundle halfway across the room towards her laundry hamper.

She misses by three feet.

//

"I'm sorry, baby. I know I said I'd be there, I just-"

Kara isn't close enough to pick up on the reply that cuts a harried and apologetic Samantha Arias off mid-sentence, but she can't miss the heavy hiss of her drawn out sigh.

"I know. I know."

There's a pause, accompanied by the slightest squeak of faux-leather and the crinkle of shifting fabric.

"I really am sorry. But these contracts aren't going to revise themselves and-"

Kara can guess who's on the other end of the line from Sam's tone alone and she feels horrific – like she's intruding on a moment that neither Sam nor Ruby would want her to bear witness to.

"Ruby!" Sam gasps, clearly aghast, before her voice takes on that bitingly calm quality unique to angry mothers. "Don't you dare talk to me like that."

Sam's molars audible grind against each other in response to whatever Ruby snipes back at her, and Kara tries desperately to listen to literally anything else.

She fails.

"No, you shouldn't talk to anyone like that," Sam scolds with an air of intense frustration. "And feeling disappointed is no excuse."

A sharp series of clicks sound in quick succession, as if Sam is flicking her pen on and off.

"Right. Then I'm going to let it go just this once, but you should count yourself lucky and don't ever think about doing it again."

Another tense and elongated pause draws itself out, then Sam sighs and softens. "I know, Rubes. It's okay. I love you too. I really do, and I'm so proud of you. You're going to be amazing tonight."

A clock somewhere in Lena's- in _Sam's_ office slips over to a new minute and the tick goes off like a gunshot against Kara's overly sensitive eardrums.

"I'm serious! You will be. I'm sure of it. It's a mother's intuition. I know these things."

Whatever Ruby says next makes Sam laugh. "Don't be such a smartass."

Another laugh, albeit drier. "I'm 29, I'm allowed to say ass."

The distinctive rustle of shaking hair accompanies Sam's next reply. "You know the deal. You can swear when you can drink."

Kara doesn't have to hear Ruby's response to imagine the whine of _that's not faaair_.

"Yeah well, life ain't fair, kiddo," Sam retorts. "And I've got to go but I'll see you later and I want you to tell me everything, alright?"

The question is followed less than four seconds later by a gentle, "Bye," and the unmistakable thud of a mobile being dropped carelessly onto something hard.

Then Sam groans. "For fuck's sake." Her chair creaks. "You know what Lena-"

 _Panic_.

That's what Kara feels when the sound of that name claws its way up her auditory nerves for the first time in weeks. And she should've been prepared, but she isn't.

So pure blind panic lights her up like she’s an overactive switchboard and she spirals back from L-Corp in a haze, violently shaking her head to dislodge the latest swell of memories – of lunches and laughter and love – that want to drown her under their deluge.

But it doesn't work.

And she's so distracted that it's entirely accidental when she stumbles onto the steady beat of Alex's heart.

But there it is, slicing through the din; loud, strong, clear. And after months without it – months that may as well have been an eternity – the sound brings Kara more comfort than she ever would've expected; the repetitive lub-dub of a normal pulse and the quiet whoosh of mild mitral valve regurgitation acting as a salve on the ache that's lived in her bones ever since the DEO stuffed Lena into a body bag.

//

Alex emerges from her bedroom in a pair of grey joggers and a thick oversized navy hoodie that makes her feel slightly like a giant human marshmallow. It's comfortable, and she sinks into it as she picks back across her living room to retrieve her scotch from the floor.

//

The decision Kara makes next, as she follows the sound of Alex’s heart until she’s staring through the wall of Alex’s new apartment, isn't one she'd likely make on any other day or under any other circumstances.

But it is today and it is under these circumstances.

Which means, even though she knows both deep down and in the shallows of her mind that Alex probably- _definitely_ isn't going to appreciate her entrance, Kara has to choose the best available option from a set of very bad ones.

And eventually she just does it.

She inverts and takes aim, twisting into a 380rpm corkscrew as she plummets out of the sky, head-first and at speeds in excess of 700 mph.

She won't pull back until just prior to impact.

//

It's after she snags her long-forgotten tumbler off the dining table that Alex arrives in the kitchen.

She dumps it in the sink and feels along the counter with one hand, bottle of Red Label in the other, until she’s beneath the cabinet commandeered for her liquor. Then she stretches up to flick the cupboard door open.

But her attempt to slide the scotch home ends in disaster, the bottle a shattered pile on kitchen floor.

Because—

_SMASH._

An ear splitting crash rips through Alex's apartment. A beige blur tumbles ass over end through the living room in shower of obliterated double glazing. And Alex’s sympathetic nervous system bursts into action, releasing a torrent of adrenaline that makes her whole body buzz.

She doesn't think she's ever sobered more quickly in her entire life. But she still doesn't react with deliberate thought. She reacts out of pure habit – habit honed through countless hours of painful training and even more painful field experience.

Johnnie is dropped without care and Alex collapses into a crouch behind the bench. Whiskey seeps from the broken bottle at her feet, pooling in the valleys of grout between the kitchen tiles, and the agent pauses to listen.

Hearing little more than a thud and a squeak, she creeps a hand up to ease open the drawer above her head. Then she reaches inside, fingers groping around until they make contact with the meat cleaver she passive-aggressively bought but never used back when Maggie tried to get her into cooking.

Extracting the knife from amongst the clutter of other unused implements requires the delicacy of rock steady hands, even as her heart hammers frantically inside its cage of ribs. 

Once it’s free she flips the blade to rest the blunt edge against her forearm. Then she slips over to the other side of the kitchen, pressing her back up against the island. Only after that does she starts to shuffle across the ground until she can peek around the base of the counter.

The gaping hole in her wall where a window used to be is unmissable. And a flash of annoyance flickers beneath the fear pulsing in Alex's veins. Because if there’s structural damage, the owners corp will kill her even if her intruder doesn't.

Maybe death-by-intruder would be better, Alex thinks. But then a face suddenly pops into view over the back her couch and in an instant all her fear evaporates.

The shock that replaces it makes her drop the cleaver.

“Kara?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY. I said I could explain
> 
> I talking to my mate at like 4 am about the technicalities of Kara's flight because she had very strong feelings about how Kara couldn't possibly fly an acai bowl from Brazil to Nat City in time for breakfast and I had all sorts of thoughts about aerospace regulations and then it hit me that there was a blatantly appalling flaw in my chapter planning. I was just going to have Kara tootle along at a casual Mach 8 in normal clothes and land with everything intact nbd but like... chances are they'd either rip or melt or auto-ignite. So I just picked the one that I had the words for and the rest is history
> 
> No promises on an update time because school sucks, but I know what I'm doing with it. It's just got to get done

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr @gramingo


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